Undiscovered
by AnnaCromwell
Summary: Lex Luthor gains insight into his undiscovered side when he finds himself attracted to a LexCorp employee with a penchant of sassing him every time she happens to cross paths. In the midst of war, aliens and meta-humans, there are a lot more discoveries to be made.
1. It's Better Than Getting Fired

Lilian packs her backpack, filling it with her daily quota of granola bars and her laptop, charger and Kindle. While she's not a scared person by nature, the move from Boston to Metropolis was a pretty sudden and major one; she had just finished her degree in Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at MIT and next thing she knew, she was working at LexCorp.

 _It's a good place to work at_ , she thinks as she catches the subway to get to her office. The firm is liberal in its approach, preferring to have its employees arrive in T-Shirts and flip-flops rather than suffocating business suits and dismal shirts. The CEO himself was a man of rather eclectic tastes, choosing to play basketball in his free time than to wine and dine with bigwigs in the social circle. _Well, he is barely 31,_ she thinks as she rushes into the gleaming steel and glass building, avoiding the soccer ball that brushes past and getting hit head first by a basketball.

 ** _Great._** It's review day, and she's already late to give her quarterly research report. She doesn't look back at the thrower, muttering an "it's okay" as she rushes into the elevator and hopes Lex Luthor isn't already in the review room, staring down her team like they're dessert.

"Thank the gods," her superior mutters as Lilian switches on her laptop and puts her notes in front. They discuss their reviews for a minute before elevator dings and another latecomer files in, panting.

"Well, I just saw Luthor finish his shoot-out challenge. Should expect him here in five." And just as predicted, five minutes later Lex Luthor files in, assistant in tow.

"Right then," he claps his hands, brushing dust off his shorts as he takes a round of the room. "So, what should I expect? Dismal, okay, good or praiseworthy?" Lilian tries to remember the sentences she'd so carefully planned to explain her idea, only to find her memory failing her as the man in question shoots her a small, questioning smile that raises the hair on her back.

"You," he points at her, "Let's start with you."

She takes a deep breath, stepping towards the projector when Luthor huffs, crossing his arms and giving her a disdainful stare.

"Explain - and without the aid of any visual presentations. That'll tell me whether I should wait here any longer than five minutes. Do you even train your newbies, Kyle?" He looks at the second in command and deputy head.

That annoys her - _he doubts our competence? Okay._ Lilian turns around to look at him squarely in the eyes and begins.

"The Aerospace R&D has come up with the plan of an dual engine, which comprises of an air breathing jet engine and a standard bi-propellant-"

"Stop."

She looks at him questioningly, and before she can correct herself and apologize, he gives her a small smile before scowling. "Is this all you've got?"

"This is what we've been working on."

"Then I should just fire you all and hire five sixteen-year olds. Come up with something better, and maybe I'll think about extending your employment contracts." With that, Lex Luthor strides out, and the room collectively groans as he disappears behind the lift doors.

"That son-of-a-" Kyle swears.

"Careful," her boss David warns. "If he's decided to peek into our room's cameras just to gauge our reactions, we'll all have libels on our heads." He sighs. "Well, that's all for the day - we meet on Monday; see you, everyone - hopefully." With that, they disperse, heading to their respective worklabs. The rest of the day passes uneventfully, until she heads to the cafeteria to get some lunch for once at the behest of Kyle and Melissa, her best friends and colleagues.

"If you're going to have any lunch, I'd suggest the grilled shrimp and chicken hibachi." Standing behind her, now in a button-down sweater and shirt, is yours truly.

"Mr. Luthor."

"Ms Chase." He smiles, steering her towards a table. "Wait here." The man returns five minutes later with two trays in hand, setting them down.

"Mr. Luthor-"

"I know it was unnecessary and that I do not need to pay for your meals yada yada, but I'm just in a good mood and wishing to apologise, so please, enjoy your meal." True to his judgement, the grilled shrimp and chicken hibachi tastes wonderful. She closes her eyes for a moment, the solitude and bliss broken by her lunch companion.

"I'm surprised you don't wish to know my reason for apologizing, given your personality."

"And what is it?" She doesn't want to come across as sarcastic, but she does, and inwardly curses herself for trying to antagonising her boss more than once. She looks apologetically in his direction, avoiding his eyes.

"Well, I suppose that basketball hurt," he quips.

"Oh." So it was him. "Well, I did say it was okay." Lilian glances at her watch, standing up. "Thank you for the meal, Mr. Luthor, but I must get going." She picks up her tray, getting the remaining food packed and reminding herself to pick some of this stuff up when she leaves for the day. He grips her wrist, and she turns to look at the man, annoyed and angry.

"It's not good manners to desert someone at a meal." The look he gives her is more amused than anything else.

"Well, it's better than getting fired." With that, Lilian pulls her arm away and races towards the elevator. As much as she is intrigued by the man, Lex Luthor scares her, and she doesn't wish to spend any more time being intimidated by his domineering personality.

The next four hours are spent working, and Lilian picks up that shrimp and chicken hibachi as she leaves for the day, with a rather curious blonde watching her exit the building.


	2. Man and God

**Hello guys - back with another chapter! As requested, the updates will try to be longer, but senior year is getting to me, so I cannot guarantee anything. One thing I can, and it is that I will try to respond to any and all reviews and PMs sent regarding this story. Character development suggestions, prompts, everything is open!**

 **P.S. I'd like to request that anon who's been posting extremely long and unrelated reviews on the story to kindly recheck whether they have confused the button with the Doc Manager.**

* * *

Deciding that getting fired would be worse for her student loans, Lilian skips her Saturday _Harry Potter_ marathon and heads for office, which is mostly empty, except for the occasional janitor in sight and the HR office which is busy coordinating the Metropolis Library Gala, about which she sees in a Daily Planet article.

It's a long day and goes undisturbed until she reaches home in the evening, where her cousin Lois is busy playing with a small scottish terrier on her couch.

"Lo! No Willie on the couch!" Lois, seeing her cousin sister, tumbles off the couch, terrier in arms. A tall spectacled man exits her kitchen, smiling sheepishly at Lois and apologising for the mess Willie has made, all while handing out mugs of hot chocolate.

"Hello," he shakes hands with her. "Clark Kent - I work with Lois."

"Good to meet you, Clark," Lilian replies, setting the cushions straight while Lois sets dinner for the three. "You must be Lois' boyfriend." He smiles boyishly, nodding.

"She told me you work at LexCorp - how's work there?" He asks over Lois' homemade lasagna, which reminds Lilian of happier times with her parents, long gone.

"Good - a bit taxing but it's fun."

"How's Lex Luthor for a boss? Heard you guys work directly under him," Lois asks. Clark feeds Willie scraps off his plate, letting the dog climb onto his lap and lick his face, laughing as the dog covers his face with drool and tomato. Lilian decides she likes Clark for her cousin - _seems like a pretty good guy._ There's something familiar about that face, she thinks as she studies him.

"Hmm? We don't really see much of him, but when we do, it's either good or very bad." The rest of the dinner passes in mindless banter and getting to know more about Clark.

"I admit I miss home quite a bit, but with Lois, home is where she is." Lois grins, smacking him on the back of his head. "Too cheesy, Clark - I don't want her thinking you're some sort of weird sap."

"Well, I suppose I am of the dorky kind," the man replies, grinning back. The two leave after a while and Lilian watches them leave. What she doesn't notice is the black sedan driving by, and the eyes hidden under bronze hair that perk up seeing her, following her until they drive out of sight.

* * *

 ** _He'd had a pretty mundane morning until that ball hit her._**

That girl (she didn't look old enough to be called lady) didn't even stop as the basketball hit her - instead, she raced for the elevator, muttering a hasty "It's okay" on her way, bag, scarf and braid flying behind her. But that wasn't that made his morning interesting.

It was the arrival of Senator June Finch's secretary that made his day worthwhile. The man announced that the Department of Defense was ready to cooperate, which was frankly the only thing he wanted to hear today, until Mercy reminded him of the Aerospace quarterly review.

The department was more sluggish than ever, and Lex considered sacking the entire bunch in favour of teenagers by the time they ended with their report. The only thing that stood out was the attitude of the newcomer, who didn't seem fazed by his presence - rather, that snarky jibe seemed to ignite her natural sarcasm and sardonic demeanour. She even had the guts to question his attitude towards their project (which, the team better accept, was mediocre at best and completely below their standards). Her behaviour towards him during lunch was intriguing at the very least, and Lex finds himself observing her strange personality more and more.

 _Such frivolous activities are a complete waste of time,_ he reasons with himself, only to find himself countering his previous statement. _She might be useful._

He doesn't like the fact that she captures his attention whenever in sight or mention, and that he has found himself lavishing more continuous brain-time on this employee than he ever did on his late father. She seems more resourceful and hardworking compared to the rest of her colleagues, and a potential asset, if utilised properly. _Smart girl._

He has finished writing up the conclusion for his report to the Senator, hoping that the lady grants him access to the import license. He considers it preferred, not necessary, of course - there are other nations that would gladly grant him access without so much as batting an eye.

"Mercy, ring up Senator Finch's secretary and tell him that the report is ready, and that I would prefer Tuesday noon for a meeting." The assistant wordlessly takes his orders, promptly getting down to finishing the prerequisites for the Gala and the meeting.

The news shows another report of Superman, this time showing the man saving hostages at the British Embassy in Libya. What the report casually leaves out amidst its exaltation of the alien and his powers, is the number of people who died and the complex and the surrounding villages that he ravaged to save these individuals.

"Power cannot be all good, and good cannot be all-powerful; the menace must be stopped in its tracks," he mutters.

Superman, with his sparkling clean image presented to the world, with a lot of skeletons in his closet. The alien wasn't known for his peaceful ways of negotiating conflict, choosing to settle them with tackles rather than tact. _A devil, descending from the sky in the garb of an angel. A demon, cloaked in the guise of a god._

Lex is at a loss to understand how the people cannot see the creature for who he is - an alien with unbridled power, with autonomy to do whatever he wishes, with no fear of any higher power. He has seen men become monsters when power touches their hands, seen the humanity fade as power and control slowly consumes them - he does not want the world to undergo this. _Not under my watch._

He will not rest until he has a deterrent sufficient for the Man of Steel, regardless of whatever it takes.

Mercy shakes him out of his reverie by informing him of a late-night meeting with the board of directors for Wayne Industries. Bruce Wayne cuts an imposing figure, his intimidating persona dominating the board, those dark eyes boring holes into Lex's figure. He knows the tactics, but isn't one to be taken in by them.

"Bruce Wayne - pleased to meet you at this ungodly hour." The man in question only nods, choosing to greet Lex with a piercing stare. "Well, I suppose this is to do with Wayne Industries choosing to extend its headquarters to Metropolis." Wayne nods, taking the seat at the head of the table. _Standard power play moves._ He scoffs, choosing to circle the conference table instead, reminding Wayne that as of now, he isn't the only one pulling the shots here, and hence must not delude himself with that notion.

"So…" Lex trails off. "What's the catch?" He stares at the seated men. "What do I get in return for this glorious offer of letting you step into my territory? A share of your kingdom?"

"A share _**in**_ Gotham," Bruce Wayne speaks, "but not a claim on it, as you stress." _Dang that man is good,_ he muses. "You will get to work in tandem with us in the defense sector, but under no circumstance can you expect Wayne Industries to back your ludicrous Spartan demands in the federal defense contracts." _Bummer._

"No need to be so defensive - I will not ask you to back me up. I don't need your pull or your clout." He looks at the board, staring curiously at Bruce in particular. "You see," he circles the men, feeling very much like a predator circling his prey, and that surge of power excites him. "I'm my own clout, so I don't need your contacts. Besides," he smirks at Bruce, enjoying the way the man glares at him, "base debauchery is not my forte."

If that drives Bruce Wayne over the edge, he doesn't let it show, but chooses to smile at him in a way that both thrills and slightly intimidates Lex. "Of course it isn't - you're too full of wonder and entrepreneur-level optimism to decide to resort to those methods, wunderkind. And that is a very good thing," Wayne laughs, looking around the table, "we don't need any more men in a seat of power who can be swindled by a pretty thing in a dress."

His cronies with Wharton degrees titter and look around nervously, choosing to look anywhere but at the boy billionaire. Lex smiles, seeing the fear cloud their faces, the nervousness on blatant display.

"Under the given conditions, should I consider this deal finalised?" Bruce Wayne nods, shaking hands with him as he signs the NOC and the other required documents.

The look Mercy gives him is an indicator that she would rate his temper and demeanour a 3 at this moment, and he's reminded that losing his mask in public like this will not help matters. He is about to vent his frustration at this fruitless day in the car when he sees that small figure he's been watching intently for so long outside a building, waving at the Man of Steel and his damsel in distress as they leave.

Following her small figure puts him at peace somehow, and that is a discovery that he is NOT pleased to make.

* * *

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	3. Worthy of The Label

**And I'm back! If anyone has any suggestions on Lex's character development, please read and review, or PM me.**

* * *

 ** _Today, she's sure she'll be toast._**

She has barely finished her concept for the review, and she isn't sure that Mr. Luthor would be forgiving of the lunchtime incident. She hastily leaves Willie some food, brushing her teeth while staring at the clock, which already reads 9:30. When she races into the office, sweater ruffling behind her and no basketball hitting her head, she's greeted by an Out-Of-Order elevator, which means that she has to race against time and twelve floors to get to the review.

It's clear that fate isn't on her side when she rushes into the office and collides shoulder-first with the CEO's assistant.

"Oh gods I'm so sorry," she rambles off, picking up the immaculate lady's files. Mercy Graves (her badge reads) simply takes the documents from her hands and retaining her stoic stance.

"Miss Chase, how good to see you at last. I'm sure you must have something praiseworthy up your sleeve, given you are 36 minutes late." Lex Luthor's voice cuts through her chaos like a butcher's knife, sending her into another wave of panic.

She steels herself, setting her things down while pushing the hair out of her face and begins.

"The idea that I propose for our next project is an electrolytic engine - running space vehicles on water." When he doesn't interrupt, she continues.

"The main concept is based upon using a PEM electrolyser to electrolyse water, then using internal magnetorquers to separate the two gases on the basis of relative density." She pulls out a slew of engineering drawings, Luthor's rules thrown to the wind. "When the solenoid valve is opened by the flight computer," she points to the respective part, "the pressurised mixture travels through a feed line into a combustion chamber, ignited by a spark plug and exiting via the thruster nozzle."

Lilian looks around the room, expecting Lex Luthor to laugh and casually discard her idea as childish and economically infeasible. She's almost accepted defeat when the man, to her shock and surprise, begins to clap.

"I'm impressed," he smiles at her. "Really, I am - mixing simplicity and innovation is not an easy task, yet you've managed to come up with something that is worthy of the LexCorp label. Good." He walks over to her, picking up the engineering drawings and tucking them under his arm and motions towards the laptop peeking out of her half-open backpack.

"I want to see that complete design in my office in three hours with all specifications and details in place. Oh, and," he pushes some stray hair from her face behind her ear, "neither the media nor I will ever know who you are if you keep running and hiding behind your hair, Miss Chase." With that, the man waltzes out of the room, and Kyle and Melissa engulf her in a hug.

"This is a better save than Kyle's Rocket Systems," Melissa comments, beaming at her. "This calls for a party."

Lilian smiles at her friends, drinking in the relief that she's not going to be fired - _not today, at least._

"Sorry guys," she gives them a sheepish look, "but I have work to do." She has three hours to complete the calculations and show it to him, so she gets down to putting in the values in the ANSYS simulator. Two and half hours pass till someone enters the worklab, said person waltzing in with no apparent regard for the drawings scattered across the lab. "No, I don't know when Services refills the Poptarts dispenser."

"That's not an issue - I grabbed the last few chocolate chip ones," the man crouches beside her, peering at the laptop's screen, the machine carelessly lying on the ground amidst a jungle of wires, writing utensils and papers.

"I still have half an hour, Mr Luthor."

"I know." He sits across her, staring at her while she finishes the final few pages, Lilian typing like she's on the most crucial part of her fanfiction.

"Here," she hands over the finished printed copy fifteen minutes later, walking out of the room for some calm. Just being in his presence makes her antsy, making her ADHD act up more than usual.

"Come in," a voice commands, and she peeks in to see Luthor scribbling notes in the margins, circling words and equations here and there. "Your choice of material is incorrect - the Titanium Aluminium Alloy would be unfavourable in comparison with the Titanium Aluminium Vanadium Annealed one."

"You didn't exactly give me time to make everything perfect." He looks at her for a while, face breaking into a small smile after a tenuous moment of silence.

"I'd agree with that point - not enough for perfection; I'd say you've come close." He resumes his circling and highlighting, adding in suggestions in the margins. Three hours later, the two are slumped by the wall, spent from the corrections made and changes done. Lilian glances at the watch and remembers meeting Lois at her office, Clark not being in town.

"If you uh, don't mind," she begins, fidgeting with her backpack's straps. "Yes, you can go now," he mumbles from behind the sheaf of papers. "I suppose you have to pick up a nephew or something - you can leave. And no, I do not find this request unreasonable - I'm not paying you overtime right now, am I?" It's not the words as much but the tone that hits her - how it implies that he sees his employees as nothing more than hands to be employed, not minds he is taking the assistance of.

"Actually, I was going to ask if I could get you something to eat since you've devoured your tarts, but if you think my thought is too dredged in lower matters like money, you can go suck on your Jolly Ranchers and slowly starve for all I care." She slams the door behind her, sick of the man's thinking - _who the hell does Luthor think he is?_

When Lois asks her the reason for her foul mood, Lilian just huffs and mutters "work" for an answer, and Lois thinks of the people who could possibly drive her tolerant cousin to a passive aggressive vent-fest.

* * *

 ** _It's only fifteen minutes after she slams the door and storms off does Lex realise that his comment was derogatory, and that he was not helping matters for himself._**

He thinks of going after her to apologize - _what am I, a lovesick fool, to be chasing her?_ The notion disgusts him, and he violently shakes his head, clearing the thought from his mind. Her work is indeed praiseworthy, capable of shaking the aerospace industry if developed by the right people - _and I am the right person, of course._ However, he cannot secure her cooperation if he is unpleasant and derogatory towards her - _not if she is the person he thinks she is._

And so, he finds himself driving to her house forty minutes later and finds her there, walking arm in arm with Lois Lane, laughing about some inconsequential matter, he supposes. _So this is the reason for her early departure._ He considers approaching her to apologize but deems it risky, and frankly unnecessary, so he contents himself with watching her, the black Maserati parked in the shadows.

That laugh is somehow comforting, and Lex finds himself craving that sight and sound of her laughter more and more. He shuts his eyes, drinking in the image, savouring the sight of her mouth curving upwards, the laughter slowly building up, spilling like honey - he can imagine the sound that accompanies the sight, the melody, clear and sharp like a waterfall.

He'll have to experience that in person soon, he decides.

When he opens his eyes, she is long gone. He drives back home, trying to focus on the June Finch problem and the upcoming deals the best he can.

That night, like always, sleep is accompanied with nightmares, but he has her smile to comfort himself with when he wakes up.

* * *

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	4. If It Be A Sin To Covet You

**And here goes another chapter! I've been a but busy, because of a competition I'm attending, but I'll make sure to update more. Read and review!**

* * *

 _ **He sees her in her worklab everyday since.**_

He watches her work, scribbling away on sheets, erasing and redrawing engineering designs, coding furiously, her hair a mess. The girl has no regard for her physical outcome when she is at work, ignoring the spider's web her hair has become, or the way her scarf lies carelessly around her neck.

She notices him observing her one day, briskly walking across the room to open the door. "Mr. Luthor, sir."

"Miss Chase," he walks in, surveying her progress. The exact design for the PEM electrolyser is complete and she is halfway through completing the design for the ignition chamber. "I suppose you need no aid of any kind from anyone?" She looks at him, shaking her head. "Miss Chase," he begins, playing with a pair of headphones lying carelessly, "I'd like to apologise."

"I assume I am aware of the reason this time?" He nods. "Well, I suppose you, of all people, must be aware of the power of words and the damage they are capable of. Coupled with the intonation they are delivered with, words make a formidable weapon." A small smirk finds a way up his face.

"Then I suppose you must believe in the power of sincere apologies too."

"Certainly."

"Then allow me to apologize for my unacceptable and ungentlemanly behaviour that day, be it weeks ago. I should have judged you correctly."

"Money isn't so big a concern for me - I'll find a way to pay my debts somehow, but I'm unsure of getting the same work satisfaction somewhere else."

"Well, allow me to atone for my sin by a sweet penance." She laughs, and Lex relishes the sound of her voice, every bit the waterfall he imagined.

"I wouldn't go so far as to call it a sin." She stares at him curiously, eyes shining. "Romeo and Juliet, the Warburton version, isn't it?" The smirk grows across his face.

"Would you accept an apology in the form of a play, tonight at seven?"

"I'm not a fan of Romeo and Juliet, or any romantic plays, in fact."

"Well then, I suppose I must find another way to express my apology."

"Really, Mr. Luthor -"

"Please, call me Lex."

"Lex," she hesitates before speaking his name, the word falling from her mouth like coins on a marble floor. "It's not necessary, I mean it - I'm okay with just a 'sorry', really."

"Well, Lilian," he looks at her, "may I call you that?" She nods, and he continues. "I realise that I had demeaned you that evening, and try as you may, you will not aid in assuaging my guilt with just a simple 'It's okay'. Please," he puts a hand on her shoulder, "let me get you a book and take you out for coffee at the very least."

She sighs, setting her pen down. "If you insist."

"Perfect!" Lex gets up, beckoning to her with a hand. "All work and no play makes Lilian a dull girl."

* * *

 ** _Frankly, she's more surprised than anything else._**

Lex Luthor apologising is a rare sight (she has had the good fortune of experiencing it twice) but asking her to get coffee and a book for an apology seems downright surprising. His casual attitude had initially caught her off-guard, but she has to admit that his persistence is endearing. Also, any male who can so easily quote Shakespeare in a conversation deserves to be made an acquaintance of, given the chance.

They walk into the Barnes and Noble across the street. "Choose," he spreads his arms out, "Anything you wish for." She peruses the shelves, picking up Oscar Wilde's "The Picture of Dorian Gray". He looks at the title, giving her a light smile as he proceeds to the counter to check the book out.

"Now, coffee - that is something better done back at LexCorp." She follows, considering the several privacy issues that may crop up, not counting the rumours sprouting like weeds. They go all the way back to her worklab, him filling two venti containers with his own concoction. They sit outside her lab, sipping the coffee while looking out at the Metropolis skyline, and the whole experience feels surreal to her, unreal if not for the chill of the coffee numbing her hands.

"Thank you so much for all this," she says in between a sip, "and I do forgive you. I hope that assuaged your guilt." He looks at her, cracking a rare grin.

"Oh, certainly - thank you for giving me the opportunity." Their drinks done, she heads back into her lab. "Well, I must let you get back," he states, "see you around soon, Lilian."

As she sits on her bed at night, she opens the book to its first page, bringing a confused smile and a shake of the head at the message written in elegant, flowing script.

 ** _'If it be a sin to covet honor, I am the most offending soul.'_**

 _A sincere apology for an arrogant folly, done to a lady of covetous intellect._

 _Yours sincerely,_

 _Lex Luthor_

* * *

Lex watches her smile, the shake of her head as she opens the book. The amused reaction, accompanied by that confused smile puts his turbulent mind at peace once again, and he leans back in the car seat, closing his eyes. Considering his memory to be insufficient, he captures the moment in a photograph - _now I can relish this moment forever._

Back at his apartment, he picks up the paintbrush after a long time, setting down to paint the image of a smiling girl seated on a bed with a book in her hands.

He sees at office the following days and the two mutually acknowledge the other's presence. He drops by at her lab at least once every day, offering comments for improvement or simply exchanging words. He slowly learns about her interests and finds a mirror in her - a person of prodigious talent with a troubled childhood, someone with whom he can relate. He finds himself, much to his chagrin, depending on her.

He depends on her smile to calm his tempers, her laugh to settle his paranoia and her presence to anchor him to reality. While he prefers the mental construct that he mostly lives in, this private bubble which they share during work doesn't seem so bad either.

"I suppose you enjoy adventurous sports?" He asks the evening they finish the project, dubbed Zephyr 1. She nods, smiling.

"Yeah - I was a bit of a daredevil back in Boston, but I left that stuff behind after high school."

"Then I guess you wouldn't mind rappelling."

"I've scaled the employee wall multiple times."

"I was never speaking of the employee wall."

"Where in Metropolis then?" She looks at him quizzically.

"Meet me in the parking lot at eight."

And sure enough, when the clock strikes eight, she's there, looking flushed. "Where to?" He simply grins, motioning towards his car. "I suppose I will have to deduce the location by the turns you take?" He nods, revving the engine. She stares attentively at the road ahead, her head whipping to the side to glance at the street signs for any telltale markers and by the time they're halfway, she's interrupted him with an excited smile on her face.

"The old Gothic church? I assume we're going to rappel from the clock spire?"

"Here we are," he points to the church, the wrought iron spire gleaming in the moonlight. "Winner takes all."

"And what is 'all' here?"

"Oh, you know," he shrugs, "bragging rights, ribbing rights and getting to decide where we get dinner tonight." He gives her a knowing smirk, heading for the staircase inside. "You'd better get going."

Years of experience at this give him a headstart but she's fast, getting to the top quickly through the ruins of the church's staircases. He's barely five metres above the ground, with her seven metres above him, when a girder falls and her rope snaps.

It's instinctive, his movements, and he's caught her waist by his left arm, pulling her away from the falling bar of iron before he can finish counting to ten. He lowers them to the ground, and he can feel her rapid breaths against his neck, their hearts hammering.

"Are you alright?" He pulls her close to inspect her and can see no visible injuries, which comes as a relief. Lilian nods, shaking her head a few times as she takes in deep breaths.

"Guess I didn't see that rusty girder coming," she shrugs. "Well, it is an added risk of rappelling in a derelict church." It isn't accusatory, but the sentence makes him feel prickly with guilt and a sense of anger towards himself. She puts a hand on his shoulder, and the gesture startles him a little. "I didn't mean to accuse you," she begins apologetically, "rather, I want to thank you for saving me from possible death and certain permanent physical injuries." She gently wraps her arms around him.

If he was startled before, he is certainly shocked now, not expecting a physical show of emotion from a person he has typed as socially anxious and reserved. It takes him a while to realise that he should be doing the same if he wishes to reciprocate her gratitude.

So he gingerly puts an arm around her, and the feeling of her arms around him and her face pressed in his hair, even if lasts for only a few seconds, is addictive and intoxicating. He pulls her closer, savouring the moment while he can. _If it be a sin to covet_ _ **you**_ _, I am the most offending soul._

"Well, there are some experiences you cannot share without becoming friends," he quips, unable to muster another suitable reaction for the awkward silence.

"Such as knocking out a mountain troll," she completes his sentence, catching the reference and grinning, "or rappelling from a church spire." A moment later, the two break into laughter, holding on to the gate for support. "Okay - where to for dinner?"

"Do you like Afghani?"


	5. In My Sight

**Sorry for the super-short chapter, but another update will follow soon!**

* * *

 ** _Lilian wouldn't go so far as to call it a date._**

Sure, they are having fun, what with the rappelling and that fall, which was where things got a bit complicated for her.

She hadn't expected him to catch her mid-fall, and the way he'd attended to her, eyes scanning every part of her body with concern and urgency once they were down. It feels strange, being cared for after a decade in the foster system, and she still isn't used to that feeling of having someone hover over you. At first, she was worried that she'd overstepped her boundaries by hugging him, but when he pulled her closer, she felt strange.

Cliche? Yes. Totally unwanted? Sure. But she now had her small sapiosexual crush on Lex Luthor become into something bigger - something she didn't want escalated, because it was a hopeless case.

She pushes the thought aside during the animated discussion they are in on Star Wars and the Grecian and mythological references which are so deeply entrenched in it.

"That's why Luke is Perseus in all means," Lex finishes, sipping onto his Irish spring water. She has been quietly listening to him explain the baroque themes and the Grecian backdrops used for Luke Skywalker's character and has only interrupted him when she felt there was more to it. He listens to her attentively as they walk, often nodding or hmming, as if storing the knowledge away for future use. She glances at her watch, showing midnight. "I suppose you need to get home now," he comments.

"I suppose we can always go to the midnight library before heading home." They are early today at the Metropolis Midnight Library, getting War and Peace and Crime and Punishment before the crowd pours in. It's a strange, peaceful sight, the two of them sitting and reading beside the car, on a bench across the library.

An hour passes, and Lilian decides on getting home. "It's just a few blocks from here," she tells him when he insists on driving her home. So he walks her home, and the experience feels so normal it's strange.

"Goodnight, Miss Chase." He gives her one of those enigmatic smiles of his, where you can never decipher whether he's amused, happy or wishing to punch you.

"Goodnight, Mr Luthor," she gets back, smiling as she closes the door. Lois is on the phone, presumably with Clark, and she gives Lilian a quizzical look, to which she responds simply by shaking her head. She has work tomorrow, and being sleepy for a meeting at the crucible is probably the worst idea she can get right now.

* * *

 ** _Too much of anything is bad._**

Lex ruminates on this one sentence as he drives back, and gods above, isn't it wrong. Too much of intelligence is never bad - _you can never be too intelligent, so I suppose, the statement still stands._ Too much of power is never bad - _you are only as strong as your adversary, and what's the harm in making yourself stronger?_

Too much of emotions? _Maybe._

He doesn't like the various emotions that swim through him, the product of hormones and a certain adventurous ADHD female. He knows what anger, hate, pride, envy, greed, power, joy and fear all feel like, but whatever this new emotion is, he is unaware to compartmentalize it. It's strangely comforting, but also fuel for his fire, falling somewhere between obsession, want, and that fool's gold that is love.

He is everything he's ever wanted to be, though he isn't sure he wants to be this. This strange, stuttering, stumbling mess that cannot muster the perfect words for a situation, that pays so much attention to a single person, that is fixated not on an object, but a being. That depends on a person. Dependence is a terrible thing, _but you can never have too little of it_.

The fact that she is out of his sight again annoys the hell out of him, the fact that he is unaware of her whereabouts, her well-being, that she is not in front of his eyes - he delights in absolution and certainty, and this uncertain mess of probabilities that he keeps conjuring is a pain in the neck, and he cannot live in this hell of wanting and not knowing, of having to not see her when he wishes to.

 _So I'll always keep her in my sight._

There - a solution for this problem. Now all he needs is a plan, and the timing to carry it out perfectly.

* * *

 **So, what do you think is his plan? Put in the reviews or PM me - let me know! And once again, read and review!**


	6. Red and Blue

**Sorry for the short chapter - on the bright side, there is a long update in the pipeline. Stay tuned!**

* * *

 ** _Lilian has only reached the doorstep when the house goes up in flames._**

The blast throws her backwards, and she is thankful for the fact that like all days, most tenants of the building are outside at work or at school. The bystanders collect by as she stands up, and a minute later, panicked yelling can be heard.

The voice is too familiar, and she can tell it's her when Willie runs out of the building. It only takes her a moment to decide and run into the inferno.

"Lois? Answer me!"

"Lilian!" She's running through the mess, trying to see through the tears that have collected in her eyes, the heat of the flames stinging her eyes.

"Lois, wait!" There she is, with a small girl whom Lilian recognises as the kid living upstairs. She's crying as Lois tries to pull apart the flaming doorway with an umbrella end. Lilian grabs the baseball bat Clark left and beats down the hanging rafts, blocking her way like some sort of a flaming cross.

"Take her and run!" Lois yells, pushing the child towards her. Lilian picks up the girl and wraps her in her sweater, barreling towards the stairs, not noticing the tendrils of fire on her sleeve, slowly burning up the fabric. The smoke is getting to her, acrid and thick, and it smells like plastic burning, _which it probably is,_ she thinks as she races down the stairs. She hears a crash above as she nears the exit, the red and blue ensemble all too familiar. But what startles her is the face in it.

 _Clark?_

The man scoops up an unconscious Lois and tears through the building, and she runs for safety, the child barreling out of her arms towards her mother as they step out in open air to the sound of a half a dozen fire trucks blaring. Lilian barely gets time to steady herself before she blacks out, the voice of a familiar bronze head ringing in her ears.

* * *

 ** _He drives up to the site of the accident, expecting her to be standing outside the building. What he didn't expect was her running in it._**

She's foolishly brave, as he can tell by the sound of a dozen rafters falling and the sound of someone (was that Lois Lane?) telling her to run. He can't hear anything anymore above the sound of the fire now, before a red and blue blur flies into the building. After that, all he can hear is the sound of half a dozen trucks blaring, ambulances lining up for casualties, the sound of a girl crying and running towards her mother from the building and the crowd cheering as the blue suited Kryptonian touches down.

Lilian (that stupidly brave girl) runs out, her sleeve half on fire, breath labored, and she barely stands upright before she crumbles, giving Lex only seconds to catch her as he carries her over to the ambulance. They put her and Lane in the same ambulance and he follows, the car tearing through the streets.

They hurry her onto a stretcher, rushing to the intensive care unit, and Lois Lane is sprinting up the stairs to follow. He sits back in the car, deciding to enter after a while in order to not spur controversy.

An hour later, he's hidden behind a sweatshirt, sunglasses and a voice slow and steady, asking for Lilian Chase's ward number. He reaches the hyperbaric chamber of the intensive care unit, where Lois Lane stands outside with Clark Kent, the man keeping a reassuring hand on her shoulder as she peers through the viewing window, her face streaked with tears. He takes off his shades and hood, addressing her directly.

"Where's the doctor?" She turns to look at him, bewildered.

"He just left with a blood sample to check for-"

"Carbon monoxide poisoning, which will come out positive, judging by the black smoke emitting from the building."

"Lex Luthor."

"As an employer, it is my duty to check on a valuable employee." She's not convinced.

"You were there when she came out."

"I'm her friend in addition to being her employer, and it is my moral duty to do so."

"She's stabilising, as the doctors state."

"It will take them three hours to clean her blood, and another two hours for her breathing and vitals to stabilize, and then another four hours of unconsciousness after which she opens her eyes." With that, he leaves, not wishing to invite anymore trouble. Looking at her condition, he is sure his calculations will work out and that she will emerge with no lasting burns from this event, which is a good thing, because he doesn't want to be responsible for any of her scars.

All in all, apart from this glitch, his plan paid off.

 **Read and review! All comments and reviews are appreciated.**


	7. Eros & Psyche

**As promised, a long update. Thanks a ton to everyone who's been reading, reviewing and taking out the time to view this fic - I love you guys!**

* * *

 ** _She hears a lot of beeping on waking up._**

When she opens her eyes, all she can see is the sharp fluorescent light of the hospital room and the various life support equipment hooked onto her. Sitting by her side is Lex ( _whom she has come to address by his first name_ , she realizes). He raises a couple of fingers, and she knows what's coming.

"They're four fingers, right?" He nods, doing a rapid series of the same.

"Four, eight, seven, three, two, okay slow down, my head hurts." He puts his hand down, visually observing her for a while. "How long have I been out? Twelve hours?"

"Nine - the hyperbaric chamber flushed out the carbon monoxide in three." She lays her head back, trying to alleviate the pain. "How much does it hurt?" He asks in a softer voice, tone much gentler than she's ever heard. It's the oddest thing she's ever witnessed, and it worries her, because only an extremely serious condition could merit such a reaction.

"How bad was I when I was brought in?"

"Carbon monoxide poisoning was the key issue, apart from other sulphurous and nitrous fume inhalations. You only had respiratory issues at the start, but they elevated to nervous; thankfully, there is no damage to your nervous system, but your lungs might struggle with oxygenation for a few days."

"I suppose Lois will be seeing a lot more of me," she quips. "Where is she?"

"She left with Clark Kent for the cafeteria - they will be back in ten minutes. As for your accommodation, you will be staying under my supervision."

"You're saying as if it was all your fault," she says jokingly; he doesn't react. "Lois will take good care of me," she turns serious. "You don't have to take this all upon yourself."

"I would feel much more at ease," he states, fingers lacing through hers. "Please don't make this harder for me - I already feel personally responsible for it." She didn't understand the reason for it, but his unusually tender behavior towards her was beginning to worry her; Lex Luthor was known to be persistent to the level of obsession, and besides, she felt safer with him for reasons she couldn't yet explain.

"All right," she says with a smile, and the smile he give her is priceless - eyes shining, he looks more grateful than happy. She shuts her eyes, the dose of morphine slowly taking its effect, and she remembers the touch of a cheek and a kiss on the back of her hand before she falls asleep.

When she wakes up again, there's another person sitting beside, apologizing profusely as soon as she opens her eyes. Lois' face is streaked with tears, Clark's arm wrapped around her shoulder.

"You're Superman," she says, and Lois laughs.

"This is the first thing you say after waking up?" Clark looks at her for a while, expression unreadable. "Those glasses are a shitty disguise."

"Works for most people," he counters.

"Well, most people are idiots. I and Lois aren't"

"Touché." Lois cleans her face, then takes her hand, stroking her hair with the other. "So, ready to go home?" She says. "You'll stay with me and Clark until the house is restored."

"Actually, an arrangement has been made."

"Let me guess - Luthor cajoled you into staying with him,"

" _Cajoled_ would be a bit too extreme, Lo." Lois sighs.

"He's smitten with you."

"Again, too extreme."

"We all know it's true." Beside her, Clark nods. Truth is, she did suspect that after today, but the very notion was so absurd she dismissed it.

"He's just a friend, Lo, and he cares for his friends." _God knows how few he really has._ "Besides, me and LexCorp's CEO… " she trails off, "Do you know how absurd you sound?"

"Superman with a lowly Daily Planet reporter sounds absurd too," Lois counters, at which Clark/ Kal El/Superman frowns. "Actually, Lois Lane with a lowly intern sounds absurd," he speaks. At that, Lois turned to counter and Lo and behold, a typical couple argument had begun.

"Guys…" Lilian reminds them of the issue at hand. "I'm going with him." Lois gives her a questioning stare. She thinks of a dozen excuses she can use, finally settling on the truth.

"He makes me feel safe," she admits. "Like someone really cares for me, like a real person thinks I am important to them." She looks away, trying to ignore those memories of the slew of profanities she received at her foster homes, until they dropped her back at the adoption house she came from.

"Lil…" Lois' voice softens, and she gently squeezes her hand.

"Besides," she looks at her again mischievously, "I don't want to eavesdrop on your 'midnight sessions'."

"All right," Clark says, and when Lois looks at him reproachfully, he turns serious. "It's all right. I know for a fact that he really will look after her well."

"Your Kryptonian senses tell you that?"

"Yes - besides, people experience a spike in blood pressure when they lie; I couldn't sense that throughout their conversation."

"From the cafeteria?" Lilian looks at him, agape. Clark simply smirks, and Lois beams at him with pride in her eyes. They talk for a while, and Lilian promises Lois that she will be back as soon as she has healed properly.

A day later, Lois escorts her out of the hospital on a wheelchair, driving towards the Luthor manor, where Lex meets them at the beginning of the twisted path that leads to manor's gates.

"Secrecy much?" She chides, and he just smirks, driving through a path hidden by massive oaks and willows. He takes her arm, the two walking into a large hall filled with baroque and Impressionist era paintings. "I have a feeling the leave will be well spent," she murmurs as he leads to the library.

"Feel free to work in the lab whenever you wish," he mentions as they pass a lab similar to the crucible, which had become her new home before the accident. Finally, they enter a bedroom, where Lex makes her settle into the bed.

"You're supposed to sleep for twelve hours, after which breakfast follows, after which you're free to do whatever you wish."

"Thank you, Doctor Lex," she teases, looking at the full moon outside.

"My pleasure." She has been feeling sleepy before the discharge, and now she just wants to fade into oblivion, so she settles down amongst the pillows and shuts her eyes.

* * *

 ** _He's lost count of how long he's been watching her sleep._**

She looks younger, the worry fading from her face as soon as she falls asleep. Now sleeping, she looks like a teenager without a care in the world. Watching her sleep puts him at peace, and for all the trouble and hurt he's caused, he feels this sight and the contentment that follows is worth all of it. Having her in his sight is comforting and exhilarating at the same time - it soothes him, calms him down but also sets his veins afire.

He sits beside her on the bed, a hand running idly through her open hair, strewn carelessly across the pillow. While he has a sense of boundaries, he figures this can't hurt to either party. He has gone through her personal history, sifted through the records, and her childhood does not differ much from his in terms of the scars it may have left on them - while he had an abusive father, she had the foster system. _As if the two were any different._

She doesn't need any more pain or neglect, and he will ensure that she receives all that she deserves, and more. "Don't worry," he whispers to her sleeping form, taking a hand, "Eros never let Psyche come to any harm under his watch." Gently kissing her forehead, he exits the room, wandering through the halls as the early morning light filters through the windows.

An hour later, he can hear the shuffling of feet in the hallway, and she joins him in the balcony of the dining hall. The early morning light only enhances her sharp features, and he's transfixed, unable to take his eyes off, no matter how much he tries.

"Good morning," she wishes him, taking a deep, shuddering breath before she sits down on one of empty chairs. "God, it does hurt." They sit in silence for a while, observing the dark storm clouds obscuring the Metropolis sky and the sharp sunlight streaming through them, casting a steel grey glow across the city.

"Breakfast?"

"I'm starving." Lex walks in, leaving a message on the system for two French omelets, toast, mushroom and cheese quiche and Irish spring water. Fifteen minutes later, he walks back to the balcony with two trays of breakfast.

"I'm sure you could ask your staff to do this for you," she states, looking up from Feynman's lectures, "or is it privacy?" He takes a seat beside her, beginning to go through the toast.

"This section of the manor is forbidden to them when I'm present. My father's wishes - besides, I hate it when people amble into this wing when I'm there." She nods, eating small bites of the omelet.

Breakfast done, he leaves for a run around the manor. He finds her in the lab when he returns, a pile of books beside her. "These books on the Greek Myths are pretty helpful for my metas," she comments, sighing happily as she presses Post on Tumblr. "I've got to maintain that influx of the Kylo Ren and Rey meta for my followers, injury or not." Her arms are bandaged at various spots, and he sees the ones at the elbows turning red.

"Your bandages need changing," he points out, and they walk to the washroom, where he pulls out the arsenal of first aid supplies. "Done."

"Thank you," she states, and she looks pure, vulnerable, beautiful, untouched - _just like Psyche._

 _My Psyche._

And then, in a instant of impulse and bad decision-making, he leans in, kissing her. A moment later, realising his mistake and in shock at what he's just done, he gets up, briskly walking out of the washroom - leaving a very confused and bewildered person behind.

Not that he's any less confused himself.

 **Read and review!**


	8. Stay

**Well, I'm back with another chapter, and a long update in tow. Tell me what you think of this one in reviews and PM's, and thanks for sticking around for this story!**

* * *

 ** _Shocked would be an understatement._**

She's trying to ignore the small hopeful voice in her head and is instead listening to the other, more dominant intellectual voice that stresses upon the fact that the whole thing played out like one massive mistake. _He just got up and walked off - probably a mistake committed as a result of bad decision-making._

Deciding upon that as the cause, she walks off to her room, quietly working on something or the other to distract herself. Apart from mealtimes, they do not meet, and no exchange occurs.

She rarely sees him after that.

Not that she cannot fend for herself, but she does feel bad of being deprived of enjoyable company with whom she could enjoy good conversation and ridiculously competitive challenges and contests, like solving the day's Sudoku puzzle in under a minute, or solving the Rubik's cube faster than him while the two were blindfolded, or writing a drabble faster and better.

Three days later, she's fixing a fitness band she found lying in one of the lab's drawers when he practically storms in, iPad in one hand.

"I'd like to apologize for my indecorous behaviour and any grief or inconvenience it has caused you." Even as her cheeks flush red at the comment, she has to laugh at the absurdity of it.

"You're apologizing for a biological instinct," she states slowly, just to confirm what she heard. "Do you know how ridiculous you sound right now?" He looks at her, dead-on, a strange expression on his face.

"Yes - I suppose that is the socially acceptable response for that."

"You know, most people just laugh it off and forget it ever happened."

"Well, I wouldn't consider this a forgettable event for me, given the fact that-"

"Let me guess," she begins, unsure of how to phrase this, "because it's a first, and you don't even forget your firsts." He doesn't react. "Well," she blushes again, "same here, so don't worry - consider this as an experiment." Again, he leaves without a word.

Two days later, she's in the lab again, feeling good enough to actually repair that broken band and turn it to something new and better.

She remembers a memory of a time at college when she fantasized about Lex Luthor, that cute wunderkind who had taken the tech world by storm, that genius who dressed in hoodies and loved to eat Jolly Ranchers and chew gum at board meetings. How she longed to meet him, to befriend him, to become more than friend and how the very thought seemed ridiculous. _It still is._

She smiles at the very ridiculousness of it, the foolish daydreams of a girl too busy and mired in responsibilities to ever indulge in social events like dating.

"I'd like to know what you're smiling at while soldering a breadboard," a voice interrupts her reverie. It's not chastising or accusatory, but playful.

"Just personal musings," she says, cursing inwardly as her cheeks fill with color. She's turned into a stuttering, under-confident freshman again.

"They must be quite… colourful, to merit such a reaction. I have a very good angular view of you and I must say, that pinkish glow suits your face."

"Shut up - I look like an idiot," she snaps back playfully.

"What happened in that memory? Something that shouldn't be on the office records?" He's standing right behind her now, breath warm on her neck.

"I'd suppose so," her voice is a small squeak.

"You know there are things much worse on people's office records," he whispers.

"Do you have a little naughty-nice list or something?" She whirls around, brandishing a soldering rod in his face. He steps back, startled but with that asshat smirk on his face. "Because I'd like to not be an entry in it." She's expecting him to lose his temper, but that never comes - what comes instead is a loud laugh, rich and filling the lab with it's sound. It's warm and happy, of all things, and she finds herself smiling a little.

"Firstly, you look ridiculous threatening me with a cold soldering rod in one hand and a Hubba Bubba in the other - a ridiculous that would come under the category of a bunny threatening someone with a carrot. Secondly, do I look like those debauched billionaire playboys to you? I couldn't even equal half of Bruce Wayne's record if I tried."

"I can gouge your eye out with that rod. And yes," she deadpans, rolling her eyes, "most people would run away screaming. Ha ha." His grin fades, face turning serious.

"They would," he exits the lab, "if they knew me." As he shuts the door behind him, she realizes how this silent exit is slowly becoming a pattern of evasion. _He can't face his emotions. He can't face himself._

Well, she'd like to know why.

* * *

 _ **Mercy would rate his attitude this week on a 4.**_

So far, he's avoided her after that unprovoked emotional/hormonal response for a total of three days, where his socially appropriate response didn't quite execute as planned but was rather brushed off with a blithe reply, and now, forty-eight hours after that, he's failed at his maiden attempt at normal flirting and let his emotions get the best of him.

So yeah, it was a week that merited a four.

He meets Senator Finch on the other end of the wing, in his father's study, and the lady's gall is impressive - _surely a girl from Ohio would have to be made of steel to get this far_. He chuckles at his choice of alloy - how very convenient for both his adversaries to be likened to steel, strong at sight but crumples under too much pressure. Titanium, however…

He is titanium - forged from the fiercest of fires, the hardest of beatings and the worst life could throw at him, he is a versatile force mankind is yet to construct an equivalent to.

The conversation that transpires is less than savoury.

"I wouldn't be taken in by it, Luthor." The lady gives him a long look, searching for a manic spark she can cling to in order to expose him as a lunatic, a deranged boy with no understanding of how the world works, a child trapped in a man's body, with a child's understanding of right and wrong. He is not a child - _that term stopped applying to me when my father first raised his voice and his hand_. She is looking for that traumatized boy he let slip in his allegory of god and power, so that she can blame his obsession with the Man of Steel as a product of child abuse.

But Lex would not call it abuse - not when it opened his eyes to the big bag world and exposed its inner workings. The world is now a machine he knows intimately, whose gears he can twist and turn to make it work his way. His father, for all his shortcomings, did what was best for him - he showed him what a monster in the guise of a man really looks like, and what it is capable of, when left to its own devices.

He has to teach this lady a lesson - and in her own way, of course. As for the Man of Steel, he has a surprise up his sleeve for him.

His head is swimming with images years back - him as a five year old, expecting praise for that motor he set straight, instead receiving yelling and scolding. He slinks away in the shadows, head downcast, wondering why Papa was angry.

He is eight now, having assembled his first computer from scratch. His father smiles at him for the first time in years, it seems.

He is twelve, having constructed his first application - it's a game, and it's pretty good, but his father has no place for his useless talents, he reminds him with a blow to the face.

He is thirteen, and scared of stepping out of his room, lest the people in the fancy suits see his scars, and the monster he once called Papa gets angrier.

He is fourteen, and tired of his life.

He is fifteen, standing over his father, victorious, the glass of milk standing innocently on the bedstead. The following morning, the coroner declares his father dead of natural causes - after all, Metropolis Police Department doesn't have the means to test for Botulinum. His convincing grief and his pitiful demeanour give the public something to root for - a cherished son, lamenting the loss of a doting father.

He is sixteen, and the head of his own empire now.

The thoughts play through his mind, and he doesn't regret them till now - until the thought of the girl he has come to covet and cherish cross his mind. How she would leave him for the monster he is - like father, like son. _We share names - what more is there to say?_

He looks in the mirror, seeing his father's tenacity and intelligence etched in his features, the softness of his mother lingering somewhere between those sharp cheekbones, in that baby face that masks a small boy who grew up too fast.

He hates how he's inherited the best of both but uses the worst of each - his father's cruelty and ruthlessness, his mother's emotional vulnerability. He sees that hated blur of red and blue in the horizon from the window, and something in him just snaps.

He's surrounded by screams and yells, and breaking china and glass, and the chaos is just increasing.

* * *

 ** _She hasn't heard that sound for years._**

The last time she heard something that terrible, it was her, finally breaking from the constant use and throw she had gone through all her life. Other children had stable homes, and here she was doing everything right, only to get dumped back at the orphanage at the end. No one wanted a small, quiet girl who was too smart for her own good.

No one wanted that little girl who somehow figured out that the nice-looking young man in a hoodie was a flesh trader; who saw her new father beating her new mother to a pulp and ran away in the dead of night; who could somehow always sense things too subtle for children of her age - who could tell when a man really wanted to give her a candy or just a packet filled with white, snowy poison.

The screams and yells seem to bring a forgotten chapter of life back in sound and colour, and she's running towards them to do anything to make them stop.

She sees him in the midst of broken china and glass, expecting to see the rage and hurt and anger radiating from every part of him. What she finds is a terrified, hurt and angry child in the place of the Lex Luthor she has come to know. Lilian pulls him out of the mess, dragging him to the room that is his bedroom. She's too busy bandaging his cuts until she sees his body shake with sobs, him taking deep breaths.

"I'm a monster," he whispers to no one in particular, eyes glassy as he rocks himself back and forth.

"No you're not," she whispers fiercely to him. She's been there, done things she's not proud of, and she knows the feeling, like poison trickling in your veins, slowly dripping into every pore of your being, killing you with guilt and shame and self-loathing.

"I don't regret the things that I've done," he says, voice hollow.

"You shouldn't have to, if they saved your life."

"You will loathe me for them." She doesn't - she has an inkling, and as horrific as it sounds to her, she cannot hate him for it.

"I don't - and that's all that matters," she replies, doing the only thing she can think of by kissing him.

It starts slow and reassuring, and she feels him calming down, before it turns to something desperate and frantic, and she feels like they're both hanging on to each other, with her tangling her fingers in his hair and him wrapping his arms around her, barricading her against the wall. There are tears and blood and all their fear and want and desperation mixed into this, and she's never experienced something like this before. They're drowning, drowning in their past and each other, but she _wants_ the latter, and she wants it more than anything at this moment.

"Stay," he whispers when they pull away for air, his forehead resting against hers.

"I will."


	9. Mine

**Thanks a lot to everyone reading this story - I like to express my gratitude with each passing chapter, as you can see. Keep reading, and send me your perspective on this story through PM's or reviews.**

* * *

 ** _He's never felt so many emotions at once._**

He knows how much it aches when you desire something, and the ecstasy and soothing euphoria that follows once you get it. But this is different.

They're desperate, hanging on to each other - she's got her fingers entangled in his hair and he's pulling her closer, trying to drink her in. He's burning and hurting and feeling better and the same time, and although he has planned for it, he had not expected his emotions to be reciprocated, and her reaction takes him by shock.

So he's confused between picking ecstatic, wanting and hurting as a primary emotion.

He presses his forehead against hers, steadying his breathing. "Stay," he entreats, begging her to never leave, because he isn't sure he can be himself without her now.

"I will." Those words put him at ease, and he wants to kiss her again, to mark her as his and no one else's.

They lie down on his bed, and he just stares at her, trying to decipher what she's thinking. "If you want to tell me, go ahead." She doesn't push him - it's just an invitation, but he doesn't feel like talking and she gets the drift, so she just moves closer, burying her head in his T-Shirt. They are just there, a thunderstorm raging over Metropolis. Somewhere in the middle of the sound of rain and her steady breathing and heartbeat, he falls asleep.

When he wakes up, it's 3AM by the clock and she's fast asleep, arms wrapped around him. The storm has intensified and on nights like these, his nightmares combine to form a fearsome duo of a childhood fear and a lifelong trauma. She's asleep, and with the early dawn and the overall peace that pervades their surroundings, it's enough to make him believe those events never happened. But the screaming and the shattering are playing like a broken record in his head, stuck on the moment when he snapped.

He slips out of bed, walking past the scores of paintings and photographs that line the walls of his father's study. The photographs are a reminder of bygone eras - the image of America in the 40s, the 60s, and at the pinnacle of his father's career, the image of both Alexander Joseph Luthors in tuxedos in the foyer of what is now LexCorp tower. There is another photograph beside it, an image of a three-year old son sitting on his smiling father's shoulders, laughing and giggling.

The person who took the photograph is no more, and there is no evidence to prove that those feet once walked these halls, Lex's little ones pattering behind in an effort to catch up with those long, graceful strides.

It is strange, being unable to let go. He hated that man - _I still loathe him_ \- but the respect and that infinitesimal amount of an emotion he felt for his father in the first five years of his life still lingers on. It's negligible, but it resurfaces when he thinks of that giggling toddler and that smiling man. The only reason he hasn't burnt and broken that picture down is not just because this was- _and still is-_ his father's study; it is the only memory, however indirect, of a lady who left the world long before her time and turned his life into a living hell.

 _Not her._

It was never her - it was his distraught, angry, unhinged father who projected his emotions onto a small, impressionable boy and left him hopeless and scared. And he can never blame her for something that wasn't her fault, but Lex Jr's - or so his father said.

He doesn't hear her approach, realizing when a hand rests on his left shoulder.

Lilian just looks at him, and he takes a step back from that photograph. "My mother was never well after my birth - she was a strong woman, having escaped the horrors of both Auschwitz and Buchenwald. My father always said my mother had steel in her veins," he laughs dryly. "Funny how most people made of steel crumble so soon in life." She doesn't comment, and he goes on.

"Anyhow, when I was five, she died of a cardiac arrest, a result of the weak heart she was already suffering from. for the five years prior to her demise" There is complete silence for a few minutes, and the two of them just stand wordlessly in front of that photograph. Lilian puts a hand over his and doesn't try to offer any consolation. It's comforting, the fact that he can share some of his most vulnerable memories without being pitied or looked down upon.

He crushes his lips against hers, the ache of his memories dulling a little. The effect is like morphine, slowly filling his veins, making him crave more and more.

And as much as he would like to restrain himself, he gives in, kissing every inch of her skin he can find.

* * *

 ** _It all seems like a dream._**

When her sleep breaks early morning - a product of her chronic anxiety - Lilian looks around rapidly, trying to gauge her surroundings. She looks at Lex, and a small smile stretches across her face. He looks carefree, almost like a small child, hands tucked under his head.

It's so much like her own fan fiction, she's worried this is one of those long REM dreams after which she'll wake up to find herself sleeping at a lab table in the crucible.

An hour or so later, Lilian turns, waking up as she feels the empty bed beside her. A light sleeper, she waits for a few minutes before walking down the corridor to the open door, light streaming through the open door.

He's standing there, staring at the row of photographs. She would first assume it to be his study, but the uneasiness in his body, the tense stance and the slightly curled fists are far away from it. _His father's?_ Would be a more appropriate answer.

Lilian puts a hand on his shoulder, the man taking a step back, and she takes a long look at him in an effort to decipher his current emotional state. She would peg it between self-loathing and a strong sense of misdirected anger and angst.

He tells her his mother's history, of her illness and subsequent demise. She can feel his pulse elevate, the anger and hurt just barely masked beneath the surface.

"Funny how most people made of steel crumble so soon in life." The statement is laden with self loathing and regret, because he considers himself personally responsible for his mother and she knows how it feels - the rage, the powerlessness, the feeling that turns good men cruel.

She puts a hand over his, trying to read his mood via his pulse. He's internalizing his grief, and Lilian doesn't like it one bit. It's been poisoning him all his life, and although she knows it is a terrible thing to live it, she can do nothing to erase it - _there are some scars we have to carry._ All that she can is be a partner in it and hope it makes it more manageable.

Lex turns towards her, eyes bearing a fractured, broken look, like shattered glass. It hurts her to see him like this, and the feeling amplifies when he kisses her, her own memories of abandon and hurt mixing with his pain.

What started as a way to dull pain turns into something more raw, the want and desire and the need to claim her evident in the way he hungrily kisses her neck, the way his arms hold her in place, his taller self pressing them against the wall. It speaks of possessiveness, of a person with absolutely no intention to share her in any form with anyone.

"Mine." The words are low and hoarse, his tone predatory, almost like a growl.

It should scare her, the hold he desires to have on her and the hold that he does; the fact that she is so ready to wordlessly surrender herself to someone - she always saw herself as a person incapable of being claimed and prided on it - should terrify her.

But all she's ever asked for is to be wanted.

* * *

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	10. Musings

**This is chapter is straight-up fluff with a side-salad of angst, but from next chapter onwards, shit will go down, Zack Snyder-BvS style.**

 ** _When Lilian opens her eyes to the bright sunlight, it's 7 AM, and she can feel his face buried in her hair._**

"Are you up?" A small nod, ruffling her already a rat's-nest of hair. "Do you want to get out of this bed?" A small shake, and lean arms gently close around her frame. "Too bad, because I need to go and brush my teeth."

"No," she can barely hear the word through her hair. "Stay."

"Lex, come on," she groans. "Stop being a baby."

"Look at us, squabbling like an old married couple," he quips, sitting up with a silly grin. "You look like a child with candy," she has to point that out. "I would eat some Jolly Ranchers to certify that fact," he begins, "but I cannot, because I haven't brushed and -"

"Hoe don't do it," she knows where this is going.

"Because I am a baby," he finishes.

"Oh my god." She throws a pillow at his face and gets up to leave, but he catches her wrist as she's almost off the bed. "Let go."

"Say please." She sticks out her tongue - _if he can be immature, so can I._

"Nuh-uh."

"Say please."

"No."

"All right." He leaves her, but she's pretty sure there's something in the works behind this. She's carefully inching her way off the bed, when a pair of hands start tickling her sides. "Oh-gods," she says between laughs, "stop," but he's relentless. "Okay - please." He stops after that, the two collapsing into laughs. "This is the most childish thing I've done in aeons," he comments, and she grins at him.

"Same."

A few minutes later, she's in front of the mirror, looking at the hickey on her neck. It looks bright and vivid after the shower, and she runs her fingers over it. It doesn't hurt, but she'll have to cover it from Lois and everyone else to keep her privacy and peace undisturbed.

"I hope it doesn't hurt," he murmurs against her ear, putting his arms around her waist as she makes breakfast in the West Wing's kitchen. He's playing with the hem of her Star Wars T-Shirt ( _his,_ she mentally corrects herself, reminded of the borrowed sleepwear), and she's trying not to let herself get distracted.

"That bruise? Nah - I just need to keep it away from prying eyes so that no one makes assumptions. Especially Lois - I don't want her assuming the worst."

"The worst?" His tone is more curious than accusatory or hurt.

"Well… I am demisexual, and being a very persnickety person, take time to actually fall in love with a person and move past all those stages. I don't want her to assume I've been stupid and gone and done things without thinking them through." She speaks fast, feeling strange as she says this aloud for the first time.

"Well, I respect your choices and will gladly acquiesce to whatever restrictions you set up."

"You will?" She's quite surprised by the reaction.

"Of course - you have as much say in this as I do, and that would be equal in all measures for any and all issues." She is happy and relieved and _gods I love this man._ But she won't tell him that - not yet, not when she's so unsure of it. So she settles for kissing him for the meantime. "Don't you think that brownie will be burning?" He murmurs against her lips when they pull away, her seated on the counter, legs wrapped around him.

"No - I pretty much planned for this," she smiles against his lips, pulling him in once again.

* * *

 ** _This is the laziest he's ever been._**

 _But not in a bad way._

He mulls over the previous moments in bed, Lilian lying with her eyes closed beside him - _she's not asleep; I can tell by her breathing patterns_. He hadn't meant to lose control of himself, but the strength of his mother's memories combined with all his emotions (he has never been good at repressing them once they leak out) motivated him to do so.

Her breathing becomes slow and steady, and the way her body relaxes is an indication that she's shifted into deep sleep. He waits for a few minutes before allowing himself to run a hand through her hair, focusing on her features in an effort to calm himself down. "Mine," he murmurs as he presses a slow kiss to that bruise on her neck. She's dressed in one of his oversized Millennium Falcon T-Shirts and plain pajamas, and the clothes makes her look even smaller.

He's up at six and waiting for her to wake. _Or not,_ he decides, pressing his face in her hair and breathing in the scent of pines and juniper, wishing that they can stay like this for what relatively feels like forever.

Lex looks at the marks on her wrists and arms, and loathes to have injured her so, leaving a rather prominent bruise on her neck. The hickey is a marker, a proof that she belongs to him and him alone. He tries to not to equate that with his abuse by his father, _which has no relation to this whatsoever,_ but they make him feel guilty, having made a promise to never be responsible for any of her wounds.

"I'll try to be more careful with you," he murmurs, gently rubbing the red marks on her wrist, kissing the places where he's hurt her so.

She wakes up in an hour, asking him whether he wants to get out of the bed, and that's such a tease, because she knows the obvious answer is no. Lex tries to keep her in, but it seems like gentle coaxing is not a trick that will work, and they sound so much like a happily married couple that he wants to both grin and throw up. The tickling is effective to a level, but she gets out anyway, and he takes that as a cue for him to go and complete his daily routine of a run.

Lex is looking for her when he returns, finding her in the West Wing kitchen preparing walnut and dark chocolate brownies. He wants to know from her whether he's hurt her, knowing she's the kind to call him on his shit.

"Nah - I just don't want Lois assuming the worst." Lex is curious, and he wants to know why she sees extreme physical intimacy as the worst.

"Well… I am demisexual, and being a very persnickety person, take time to actually fall in love with a person and move past all those stages. I don't want her to assume I've been stupid and gone and done things without thinking them through." Her answer is rushed, and he can feel her cheeks heat up - _this is something she's never shared with anyone_ , and he delights in the fact that he's the first to know so.

He has always had issues with physical closeness, and it is no surprise, given his past. So he agrees to abide by whatever restrictions she sets up, because letting her go will be the biggest mistake he is capable of making.

The answer takes her by surprise, and he has to remind Lilian that he is not one of those idiotic males who prefer to put themselves above their partner simply because of the social preference historically given to them.

Her reply is much more sweeter than the brownies.


	11. ATTENTION - Apology Note

**As someone pointed out in the previous chapter, I indeed did get something sensitive wrong, namely depiction of demisexuality. Since this was posted by a guest, I would like to apologize via this authors note.**

 **Sorry for that mistake, and thank you for pointing that out.**

 **If they, or anyone else has any further comments for me or suggestions on how I can alter my approach to be more authentic and less offensive, I welcome any reviews or PM's sent.**


	12. ATTENTION - Author's Note

**Hi guys,**

 **Thanks to a well wisher here, I've just found out that this work has been plagiarized, with my OC's name changed to Wendy. To whoever that is doing this, I will take legal action against you. As for my other readers, please boycott Camillataglietti ( www. wattpad user /Camillataglietti) for having stolen my work.**

 **That's all for now.**


	13. Beating Heart

**Sorry for the delay, but some really important stuff came up, and I just had to look into it. So here goes, a long and slightly intense update.**

 **IMPORTANT - Trigger Warning for panic attacks ahead.**

* * *

 ** _Lilian had expected Lois to call sooner._**

Her cousin calls, filling her in on the crucial information that she will be gone for a few days with Clark to Washington DC. "I'll be back in three-four days - till then, I'm sure your _boyfriend_ would love to have you around for a few days more."

"…I'm not even going to contest that." A pause on the other end.

"You better not have done anything stupid."

"Nope."

"Good." It's night, and she's prepared all the necessary documents for her work restarting tomorrow. Lex walks in, drenched in sweat after a single-man game of basketball, checking the scores of the latest Metros game on his phone. "Well, you got your wish," she tells him as she unpacks her work set of clothes, setting them on a dressing table, "Lois will be out for three-four days with Clark, so I'll still be around for that long." He pouts, face scrunched in an adorable frown.

"I'd wished for you to move in - looks like Hanukkah needs to come early, but this is really good for the meantime too." He starts again, as if suddenly remembering something. "I have to go to DC tonight." She switches on the television in the room, the reason for all the departures to DC now becoming clear by the CNN reports.

"Senator Finch's Superman Committee," she says aloud. He looks at her, expression unreadable. She's heard about Lex Luthor's backing for an anti-Superman legislation, and now she doesn't know where to stand. "I need to talk to you about something when you return." They share a long look, and she knows that they both know.

"All right." The topic ends there as he walks off for a shower, and she's trying to think of ways to make him understand how the Kryptonian is nothing like his father. It doesn't seem like a conversation for tonight when the bell rings and Mercy Graves (bless that lady's soul for being here at this hour) forwards a message indicating that Clark is here.

A few minutes later, he walks in with a yapping bundle, out of which jumps Willie, rocketing straight towards a white-clad figure, which begins sneezing almost instantaneously as the dog jumps into his arms.

"Good Lord-" a sneeze, "A Westie?" Another sneeze. "Good boy," he pats the dog, prompting a round of sneezing again as he lets the canine go. Lilian picks up Willie, looking at Lex with a look torn between laughter and concern.

"I've always loved dogs," Lex sneezes for a final time, nodding at Clark, "but the allergy. They had to keep me away from the family Alsatian for this very reason." Clark looks - no, glares - at Lex, arms folded.

"Lilian, I need to speak to you separately - care to step out for a moment?" She nods, following him. Once out of earshot, he stares at her with a mixture of anger and concern. "He's hurt you - why didn't you tell me and Lois?" Lilian groans - _apparently the Man of Steel can see through a NASA-LexCorp hoodie._

"He hasn't hurt me, Clark," she reassures him, "it was with consent - I allow him to do so."

"Certainly those marks on your wrists weren't allowed."

"Clark, **_I don't care._** I absolutely don't give a shit if I have bruises and sore wrists and bite marks if a person genuinely cares for me and loves me, and has an emotional attachment to me, not just physical. I know I sound weird and probably a nutcase, but here it is. Besides, he never meant to do this."

"Lilian," he sighs, "there is a thin line between love and obsession." She stares at him, trying to wage a silent battle, which she wins just because he concedes. "I just mean well for you."

"I know - you're like the older brother I never had."

"Take care." With that, he walks in and walks through the main corridor. She standing outside, staring at the stormy Metropolis sky, wondering how everything just complicated itself in just a few minutes.

"I suppose Mr Kent has a reason to be miffed at me."

"He's just worried for me," she mumbles into his shoulder as he pulls her close.

"Well, I suppose he should be, given the sight."

"Lex," she takes a deep breath, "you know what I think of this."

"Lilian, Kal El is not a threat yet, but can be. I'm just wanting the human race to be prepared."

"Lex, he's not your father." She looks long and hard at him, trying to get the message across without any misinterpretation. "Don't equate Clark to him - he's a good man, something that your father never was to you."

"Kal El is an alien who has been elevated to a status no one deserves." He takes a few steps back, looking at her with a look torn between anger and helplessness.

"He is all some people have."

"He never saved me from my father's abuse and abominations - neither did he save you," he spits out.

"As much as I would love to have a normal past, it has made who I am. Besides, he is hope in a world increasingly being plagued by hopelessness - you don't want to take their beacon of faith away."

"There is no God, and I don't understand how you can be so naive as to believe in a notion of a higher power saving you from your troubles." He was worked up, anger seeping out in his words once again.

"I never said I did."

"If he's all powerful, he cannot be all good, and if he is all-good, then you can forget him being the world's beacon of hope for long, because he cannot be all-powerful."

"He doesn't need to be all powerful to be a symbol of hope."

"He will screw up," Lex almost snarls, and the ferocity takes her aback, "and when he will, all of the people who protect him will turn on him, and he will turn on us. And who will save the world from a terror they can't stop then?"

As the chopper flies away, there's a sinking feeling in her, and it's not because of the storm.

* * *

 ** _He's never had qualms about lying before._**

However, he hates lying to Lilian, primarily because he knows she'll see through them anyway. She understands him better than anyone he's ever met, she catches on faster than anyone he's interacted with and is at par with Bruce Wayne on the topic of intellect and IQ. Strategically, it makes it hard for him to lie to her.

Morally, it makes it sacrilegious.

He doesn't wish to keep secrets from someone who's accepted him for who he is, not what the world wants him to be. She's seen in him in his bad days but doesn't hate him for them, she _knows_ he killed his father but understands how necessary it was for him. So deceiving someone like that would be tantamount to committing a heinous crime.

But it's her safety, and the possibility of a shared future, that's prompting him to take such steps. Deception and extreme measures, which she will necessarily not comply with, will be necessary and imminent in the coming months, he tells himself as he walks into the hotel room with his headphones plugged in his ears, staring at the starry DC sky.

 ** _You're dripping like a saturated sunrise  
You're spilling like an overflowing sink_**

He's spilling all his secrets and vulnerabilities like a waterfall, _and Achilles wasn't invulnerable with bare ankles, was he?_

 ** _You're ripped at every edge but you're a masterpiece  
And now you're tearing through the pages and the ink_**

 _We're flawed and ripped and torn, and we will rip ourselves apart if she continues to oppose me, because I cannot stand for what she does_. The lyrics speak out to him, but they mock him, and he throws his phone across the room, the set falling on the bed with a dull thud.

The morning brings with it a moment of judgment and a moment of truth.

Senator Finch gives him a look of loathing, which he returns with an equally amused smile. "Save a seat for me, Mercy." The plan is on track, moving smoothly, and Senator Finch should glance at that little present he'll sneak in exactly a fifth through her speech, at which she'll pick up that little curio, and the Capitol will explode in a shower of agony and hatred.

As he puts the jar of Granny's Peach Tea on the table, dressed in a janitor's uniform, Lex does feel a tiny stab of regret at wasting a useful resource like Mercy. _Good assistants are few and far in between._

* * *

 ** _Lilian watches the Capitol explode - live._**

She's in the crucible, going through her (now) daily routine of running the supercomputer with the engine simulations and logging results, when Kyle enters the lab, looking strange.

"Lilian, is something going on?" He asks as he logs in, filling in for Lex's absence.

"Going on as in?"

"Is something going on between you and Lex Luthor?"

"My equation with my boss is nobody's business," she answers curtly, switching on her laptop.

"I'm your best friend."

"Then you should respect my privacy and not ask such ludicrous questions."

"It's pretty obvious - you've been missing ever since that accident, and last I asked Lois, you weren't at her place. I know you weren't with Melissa, and the only other person you've shown remote closeness to is our CEO. What's on between the two of you?"

"Again, none of your business."

"I want to know."

"And why is that?"

"Well," he exhales loudly, "it's because I care for you, and have an interest in being far far more than friends. And **_that man_** ," he adds with vehemence, "is not someone you should ideally be with."

"Don't have Lex catch you saying that," she murmurs grimly.

"He's a decade older than you," he goes on, not hearing her.

"And…?"

"A decade? Seriously?"

"I'm twenty-one and mentally mature, you moron. Besides, he genuinely cares for me, and any explanation beyond this is something I deem completely unnecessary." Kyle turns away in an agitated manner, switching on the TV, and the sound of the explosion takes her by shock.

"Authorities are reporting a bomb blast at the Capitol, where the Superman hearing had just begun. Currently, the number of deaths is unclear, but the casualties may include Senator June Finch and billionaire Lex Luthor, a prime advocate of the anti-Superman movement."

The colour drains from her face, and for a moment, Lilian can feel her body shutting down. She is just standing there, fists clenched, nails digging into her palms; her breathing is slowing down to a stop before she starts taking rapid gasps - signs of a panic attack slowly building up.

"Lilian? Lil?" Someone's shaking her - she doesn't recognize the voice, heck, she doesn't recognize anyone and anything right now - and is asking her how she is, but are they blind and deaf? Can they not see? Can they not hear?

So she breaks into a sprint, tearing out of the lab like a maniac, panic clouding her vision as she jams her finger into the lift's call button repeatedly. The elevator taking too long, she takes off on the stairs, people yelling and calling behind her (she can hear Kyle and Melissa the loudest in that din) as she jumps stairs in twos and threes.

It's a pretty mindless decision, but she takes the black Maserati parked in the spot labeled Lex Luthor and switches on Maps.

"DC." Her voice is all strained and broken and almost foreign and familiar at the same time. The GPS begins in its robotic monotone and she tears through the forest track, ignoring the fact that she is blatantly veering off the recommended path. As long as that dot keeps coming closer, she doesn't matter how she makes it happen.

Lilian is a hundred percent sure that the car looks like it's been through a hurricane and a landslide all at once and that the authorities will stop her, but they're too busy mitigating the chaos at the Capitol to care - with nightfall, the protesters are raising hell with even more ferocity and anger.

The general hospital is littered with the injured and bodies in white, and she feels like puking when she thinks of who could be underneath any of those.

"Lex Luthor?" she asks the receptionist frantically.

"Not admitted."

"You better not be lying to me," she almost snarls - _damn hospitals and their practices_.

"No," the receptionist squeaks. She takes off from the building, checking his next known location as per the car - the Ritz-Carlton.

The car almost tears into the driveway, and she's in the lobby, not caring that everyone around her looks astonished at the 21-year old wearing a NASA-LexCorp T-Shirt, a black jacket and jeans and converses walking into the lobby of the Ritz with an expression that would best suit a warzone.

"Lex Luthor."

"Ma'am, I'm afraid we aren't allowed to disclose -"

"You will tell me where he is," she says in a low and cool voice masking a barely controlled temper, making the receptionist back, "or so help me."

"Hades," a voice whispers behind her, loud enough to reach her ears.

She's in that frozen trance again as Lex walks towards her, whole and unharmed. He leads her towards the lift, and she is trying to drink in the fact that he's alive.

"I'm okay," he repeatedly murmurs as he rubs her back, her breathing reverting to short, shallow gasps. "We're okay."

They're in a dark room lit only by the moonlight before the fact fully sinks in and Lilian begins to cry, her body shaking with each sob. No words are said as he pulls her close, and she needs to **_see_** him, to know that he's alive. She knows all of this was an overreaction, but he almost **_died_** , and she cannot lose someone she loves again.

"You're alive," is all she says, her voice hoarse, before she grabs his face with both hands and crushes her mouth against his. They're frantically pulling at each other, with her grasping for his coat, trying to pull the damn thing off as he yanks off her jacket. He bites down on her lip, and she sighs, climbing onto his lap as he undoes the fishtail braid that her hair is in. They pause to look at each other, laughing in the midst of all those tears and the mess of shoes and socks and jackets that they created.

"Can't sleep?" he asks her hours later as she burrows herself closer into his chest, his T-Shirt the thin barrier between her ear and his heartbeat.

"I just want to hear your heartbeat."

* * *

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	14. New World Coming

Lex

They leave the following morning.

The two exit the Ritz as soon as the clock strikes seven, with Lex calling in a towing company to dump the Maserati. "I was planning to total this one," he tells Lilian when she gives him a raised eyebrow, "this being a gift from the board of directors. Thank you so much, love," Lex adds in a quick peck on the cheek as they walk into the lobby.

"And what of your chopper?"

"Eh, David will take it," he comments as they enter a Volvo he called in from his part time driver-cum-pilot. "I'd like to talk to you about quite a few things."

"About that - I had a panic attack." She looks downcast and almost ashamed, and he has an extreme urge to wipe that off her face.

"Not about that - I completely understand that, though, and am frankly amazed that you care so much for my well-being." She doesn't reply, choosing to stare outside the window, watching DC whizz past.

"Lex," she finally begins after a prolonged half-hour silence, "what happened there?"

"Suicide bomber," he curtly replies, "Wallace Keefe. Ex Wayne-Industries employee, disgruntled by Bruce Wayne's lack of attention to his employees disabled or deceased in the Kryptonian war here." He doesn't mask the annoyance and anger in his voice, and she turns to look at him, confusion and sympathy etched on her features. "This is why I want him controlled," he drops his voice to a murmur. "Kal El is most dangerous right now - he doesn't answer to us, he doesn't answer to anyone. He doesn't care for this world, or its people."

"His actions wouldn't say so," she counters, voice softer than usual but not lacking that clear, hard edge it adopts when she chooses to win an argument.

"Lois Lane and Martha Kent are just two individuals in a sea of seven billion people." And as much as she is curious and inquisitive, she doesn't want to know how much Lex knows about the human side of Superman, and how he plans to use that to his advantage.

"He isn't obligated to save those drowning fishermen, or those quake-riddled cities, or that exploding Proton or Antares rocket. He chooses to do that, Lex, and that's what makes all the difference."

"We fear what we don't understand."

"I wouldn't argue with that one." There's something off about that statement, a double edge to her words, and he's worried that the other may be directed to him.

"... I wish to be completely honest, and expect the same from you."

"I'm not scared of you, Lex - I'm scared of what you're going through, and how it might change you."

" ** _Change_** me?" She doesn't reply, but he knows she's talking about the sudden increase in his constant resentment, him constantly boiling over. She hasn't seen the worst of him, and he is afraid of her leaving when she does.

"You're afraid of me leaving, aren't you?" She comments after a prolonged pause. He loathes his insecurities being publicly broadcasted, but coming from her, it sounds more like a fact than an accusation. "Well, I'm certainly not going to jump out of a car going 100 mph." They're nearing Metropolis, the city's skyline emerging like needles in the sky. "No, seriously Lex, I won't. I'm not going anywhere - you might be crazy, insane or a gone case, but all the best people are a little crazy, and frankly, I like that. Besides, I don't trust a guy without a dark side."

He feels relieved, but the statement sounds too good to be true, so he stops the car in an abandoned parking lot, rain falling in a steady sheet around them.

Three hours later, they're curled up on a sofa, with Lilian reading "A Tale of Two Cities", and Lex thinks back to that short conversation with the Man of Steel in an inconspicuous hallway.

"Well, look who's here," he had commented as the man passed by the deserted corridor, cape trailing behind. Kal El just looks his way, and that piercing gaze communicates all the alien has to say.

"You, Kal El, are going to pay." His resentment and hatred towards the man had poured over in his words like vitriol. "For your crimes against humanity, for those skeletons in your closet and of course, for turning the one I love against me - for that, you will pay with more than your life." The peppiness returned to his voice again as he whistled good-bye when he walked away, mop and cleaning bucket in one hand, a remote in the other.

"We're in the midst of a war now," Lilian murmurs, bringing him back to the present. "A real war."

"I won't let you come to any harm," he replies, pulling her closer. The Kryptonian has brought this war upon them, and Lex is aware of paying that overwhelmingly steep price of victory that is sacrificing what he holds dear.

 _But I'm not prepared to lose her._

Lilian

 ** _They're nothing but a beautiful lie._**

"This is a beautiful lie we're living, Lex," she states as they lie on the sofa, "A lie we'll have to stop living now. All this happiness, these moments of uncaring bliss - they're nothing but a beautiful lie." _I don't want to live a lie._

"Then let's leave. Just say the word - we'll go someplace none of this can touch us." The statement surprises her, because the last thing she ever expected from him was to run.

"Are you really planning to run away from something you are a part of?" She sits up. "Because I'm not a coward - I'll stay back and fight, if that's what you want."

"What I need is for you to stay safe," he sighs, running a hand through his hair. "I had no intention of dragging you into a fight that was never yours."

"It isn't yours either - you made it yours," she points out.

"It's my duty as someone more privileged, in every sense, to protect the Earth from the threats it faces, especially the ones that can be mitigated. That bomb blast at the Capitol was just a spark of a growing inferno."

"And you want to firefight - Lex, you're the one making the alarm systems, not the firefighter."

"I will be if required."

"And get burned in the process."

"Well, it's a small price to pay to stop the world from burning."

"It's an unnecessary expense."

"So you believe these aliens, these… metahumans, these Indigo children of evolution, are not a threat to society? To humanity?"

"Metahumans?" He closes his eyes and sighs deeply, taking a hand as he leads her down the corridor.

Once in the lab, Lex unlocks his account on his workstation, opening a collection of folders labelled Meta-Humans. The folders are only four in number, but their sizes are overwhelmingly large.

"I'm amazed how you, of all people, have not noticed those peculiar news clips in the Daily Planet - doesn't Lois Lane ever speak of work at home?" He's flipping through embedded folders inside the one with an A till he reaches a video clip. "Here."

It's of a man, breathing without any support under the sea. The depth is halfway to the Mariana Trench's deepest point, and no human should be able to survive the pressure the ocean exerts on them at such depths. The humanoid is dressed like an archaic god, with a bronze trident in hand - he rapidly rises, crushing the camera closest to him.

"How in the…" She's at a complete loss for words. "I don't believe those coordinates, even for a bloody second. Where was this shot? SeaWorld?" He isn't smirking, and the grim look on his face scares her a little.

"The Mariana Trench."

"I... No- just no. Lex, stop playing around."

"This is just the tip of the iceberg." He switches to a folder with a lightning bolt, playing the video feed.

"Someone fast-forwarded this nonsense - just a gimmick." Lilian refuses to believe how the man took just forty-five frames to complete that action of beating up the assailant and returning to his previous position. Yet the evidence is overwhelming.

The third folder contains several images of what appears to be the same lady over a period spanning four centuries. "You know what they say about the seven doppelgangers?" Lex goes on, flitting through each image and a carbon-dating report for each. "I believe it is the same person, and no, none of the reincarnation crap - literally the same person."

"Lex… you're suggesting immortality, or near-immortality. Even demigods aren't supposed to be immortal."

"Then maybe we're wrong." He switches to the last two images.

"Diana Prince? Maybe she's got a grandmother who looked exactly the same and loved sparkly outfits."

"Or maybe, Wonder Woman has been alive all these years."

"You need more than a bunch of similar photographs to convince me." It may be Lex Luthor feeding her the information, but Lilian's scientific side refuses to listen.

"Well, this should convince you. This is from S.T.A.R Labs - I procured this myself." The video shows an old man treating the strapped body of a male, with the subject apparently being a Victor Stone.

The video seems normal until that box moves.

It looks like pure metal, but the fluidity with which it moves seems to provide it with a life of its own. The metal encases the young man's body, and then all goes black.

"We've just met one alien - what's to stay more don't exist?" Lilian is too busy absorbing the information she has received from her senses, her reason battling with intuition. Her mind screams bloody murder and fallacy, but her intuition has a nagging feeling that the man beside her is absolutely right with his observations and subsequent conclusions.

"Is this all you got?" For the first time in quite a while, she sees a spark in his eyes, and she can practically see his neural network lighting up like a Christmas tree, running a million miles a minute.

She gets her answer when they walk past the metal doors of the restricted laboratory in LexCorp's information park, the dull alien metal glinting in the pale yellow light. Lex pulls her close, the whisper in her ear simultaneously jubilant and reverential as she takes in the sight before her.

"Love, we've barely just begun."


	15. I Have A Bad Feeling About This

**_Even the most dramatic of days can be interrupted by cramps._**

Lilian's going through the Kryptonite research files, analysing the makeup of the element and trying to forge any possible Earthly connections to demystify it, but her stomach is cramping up, and she can feel the pain spread to her pelvic region.

 ** _Great._**

She has a shit ton of work to do, and the first two days of her monthly cycle are not only painful as hell, but really crippling in her case.

"I'm not even going to ask you if you're fine - tell me what's wrong," a voice interrupts her internal monologue as she stifles a wince.

"And what if I say I am?" she replies with as much snark as she can muster.

"Then that's a completely baseless excuse, seeing that you have an expression of extreme discomfort etched on your face."

"I do not."

"Well, most people aren't adept at reading expressions like me."

"I can handle it." Lex is unrelenting, and how on Earth does she explain this to him?

"You do realise stomach cramps can be an indicator to ailments like food poisoning, don't you?" He's staring her straight in the face as his fingers quickly shuffle through photographs, arranging them sizewise. "And I know they're stomach cramps because of the constricting position you're sitting in."

"Well, I deal with it twelve times a year, and it does not affect my health in any adverse manner, so just forget it and get back to work." A while later, a look of comprehension dawns on his face, and she hears a small gasp, a very quiet "oh" following it.

She's halfway through deconstructing the molecular structure of the element, and is manually pulling apart sketches of its crystal lattice when a blanket is placed over her shoulders, followed by a hot water bottle and a box of Lindt truffles.

"Well, your body temperature has risen considerably," he places a hand on her forehead, then under her chin, "and you should be experiencing slights chills or an extreme need to sleep - if not, then an extreme need for chocolate or any such cocoa-containing substances. I don't want work to be affected, and I suppose neither do you - however, if you feel you need sleep, I will not mind."

She wants to laugh and cry at the concern being shown, and contents herself by moving to a comfortable sofa in a corner of the lab with all her equipment. The warmth of the sofa, combined with the blanket provide a comfortable working spot, _perhaps too comfortable,_ because four hours later, her eyes are fighting sleep, so she curls up on the sofa, putting the laptop on the adjoining table and putting the playlist on her iPhone to shuffle.

 ** _"And I'll use you as a warning sign_**

 ** _That if you talk enough sense then you'll lose your mind"_**

 _Don't we all_ , she wonders, thinking about their research, and, if all of it happens to be true and real, how they'd be viewed as heretics in the scientific world, a duo of young prodigies having gone off the proverbial rocker.

 ** _"And I'll use you as a focal point_**

 ** _So I don't lose sight of what I want"_**

The soothing beats are getting to her, and she's slowly drifting away.

* * *

 ** _Well, this is the only time Michael Bay is right._**

Lex is going over the metahuman files for Victor Stone, codenamed Cyborg, and the metal in the footage seems incredible, possessing the fluidity of Michael Bay's Transformium - _well, this might be its real equivalent._

The structure is near unbelievable - who knew of metals to possess an alterable crystal lattice? The reports suggest that the crystal lattice of the material changes on supplying electricity, changing the very molecular structure of the metal, if required. _Durability and strength greater than diamond to softness of talc - anything is achievable._

The threat of the Kryptonian, Kal-El, hangs like a sword over his head, yet he has the time and mental capacity to fully appreciate this scientific marvel, _which clearly doesn't come from this world._ It makes him both happy and sad to prove Fermi wrong - _it would have solely been happiness if Superman had decided to just remain a Kansas farmer._

It is the worst of times, yet his mental framework sees it as nothing less than the best - part of the credit would also go to the young lady in the room. "Fascinating how a mundane thing such as companionship is capable of changing someone's mindset so drastically," he mutters to himself while clearing his worktable.

And although he hadn't anticipated tending to her "issues", as she'd put it, Lex had found himself rising to the occasion with more concern that should have been there. Apart from the usual supplies of cocoa, blankets and hot water, he found himself in the library, going through his mother's work. As a GP, Maria Luthor had an arsenal of work to suffice for tending her family at home, given her husband's extreme aversion to people interfering in their personal life, especially doctors - _the men at Auschwitz weren't exactly angels_.

Besides, with enough knowledge in general medicine courtesy of the aforementioned tomes, Lex filed the immediate symptoms under influenza, sending him into a flurry of concern. Despite her protestations, he figures one small blood test wouldn't hurt - it will also be a test run for that home health system LexCorp's bioengineering division has been dabbling in.

She doesn't even wake up, the needle's prick barely registering any significant pain to rouse her. A few minutes later, the test results return Lilian's original diagnosis - _well, I suppose a little caution can never hurt._

He picks up the scattered belongings, her headphones and phone amongst the collection of items fallen from the sofa. Curious, he puts on the headphones, listening into the song on repeat.

" **_And I found love where it wasn't supposed to be, Right in front of me._** "

He hadn't even expected for the emotion to ever make a recurrence in his life - finding it right in front of him was a downright miracle. A small smile crosses his face as he adjusts the blanket and gets back to his worktable.

 _It really is human tendency to find happiness in the worst of times._

* * *

 ** _Kyle never calls - unless it's an emergency._**

"Lil. Lilian?"

She's half asleep when she answers the phone, but the words from the other end jolt her back to full alertness.

"The Bat is here."

" **_The what?_** "

"Batman is here, at the LexCorp research compound, and God alone knows what he wants, but he's tearing the place apart, and you better tell your boyfriend to hurry, else the place will be in utter ruins before you know it."

"Where are you?"

"I'll answer that," a gruff voice answers in place of Kyle. "Tell Lex Luthor not to meddle in things that aren't his business." The speaker hangs the phone abruptly, and Lilian's racing out of the lab and towards the basketball court. Lex shoots her a smile, the expression wiped off after seeing the look on her face.

"The Batman is at LexCorp Research."

The colour drains out of Lex's face, his figure trembling with anger, and he's striding towards the garage. He starts the car, tearing out of the Manor compound, and Lilian's decided not to let him drive on the way back.

The compound is in utter chaos.

Police is swarming onto the scene, and in the darkness, no one spots the two of them racing towards the innermost labs. Her worst fears are confirmed when she sees Lab 2's door open, a bat impaled in it.

"He took it," Lex's voice is barely a whisper, but the rage in it scares her. He turns to her, face reassembling into a mask of calm.

"Collect whatever's left here - if the Bat's spared any, that is." He stalks out of the room, and a few minutes later, Lilian can hear ambulances. A peek from the destroyed room shows people being carted onto stretchers, and Lex is gently questioning an employee.

Only when the premises are clear and the guards remain is when his façade drops, and she can see the rage building up, simmering until it will all blow up, and she's worried for the recipient.

Barely two minutes pass after which the sound of breaking glass and an angry roar echoes across that section of the desolate compound. "How could ANY of you let this happen?" she hears him yell, and the sound is so harsh, so unlike his own voice that she rushes out of the room into the corridor - _one breakdown per fortnight is enough._

"I will make sure the Bat tortures every single one of you - personally," he says in a much more even tone, voice scratchy and hoarse. "And I will make sure it is bad. Very, very bad."

He walks back to where she stands, clothes disheveled, his bronze hair all over the place. She takes the keys from his hands, handing him the box of evidence and research from the destroyed lab as they walk back to the car.

"You're too incensed to drive," she slides into the driver seat, starting the car. They're nearly home when the cloudy, moonless night is lit up by the sign of the Bat, the sigil drifting across the sky, and Lex looks like he will break something again. "Where's the garage?"

His quizzical look is met by a shrug. "Where you keep your old, useless pieces of machines." They walk to a white cuboid at the back of the manor, and Lilian rifles through the red toolbox for a crowbar, finally finding one.

"Here - take this." She thrusts the metal bar in his hand, motioning at the scrap lying around. "I am just as angry as you, but I don't want you hurting yourself or trashing the house again." Lex takes one look at the crowbar, then at her, and clangs it on a rusting car hood.

She moves out as the sound of grunting, screaming, shattering and clanging metal fills the garage.

A while later, the man emerges panting and sweating, looking worn-out but wearing a huge grin. "Well, Batman just did me a massive favor," he answers in reply to her questioning expression.

"How?"

"Well, Kryptonite is the only element you can use to perform a Kryptonian autopsy," he remarks while heading back to the manor, and the chill running down her back has nothing to do with the weather.

 _I have a bad feeling about this._


	16. Problems Up Here

**The prelude to the greatest gladiator match in the history of the world, AKA the moments before it all goes to hell in this fic.**

* * *

 ** _Anger management does have its moments._**

For all that was worth, Lex is certainly calmer after that destructive outburst, mind clear and whirring with a plan. As much as Lilian's help would speed up the process, he simply can't drag her into what was already a murky unknown territory and presents no friendly aspects of itself.

Wayne had done him a favour by plundering the Kryptonite from LexCorp's Information Park. Granted, it was not part of his plan, but a little outside assistance never went waste. "I have seen you strike, Bat," he murmurs, absently stroking a salvaged file in his hands. "I have seen you fly. That night in that hovel? Lex Luthor, beat cop at your service."

"I've digitized and securely saved those files," Lilian announces, muffled steps accompanying her words. "Lex," she takes a seat beside him, the sofa's leather shifting and pressing under her weight, "I'm not an idiot, I clearly heard what you said, and you getting hurt isn't anywhere on or even near my list of things that I would want to witness."

"Would promising to not act on those words be enough reassurance?"

"Properly executing that promise would be enough." Her words lack selfishness, and _gods damn it_ he wants her to be selfish and not put him before her. There's always the selfish one in a relationship, _and I guess that's me_ , he tells himself as he puts an arm around her waist, pulling her to his side.

"Your wish is my command," he whispers against dry and chapped lips, and they're lacking all that chocolate and mint of a chapstick, but he knows he doesn't want to taste anything else at all at this moment. Fingers comb through his hair, a hand cupping his face, and this is comfort and home, slow and gentle and calm-inducing.

"Been quite a day," she comments, head resting on his shoulder, feet tucked in by his side. "I'm sleepy," a yawn follows the proclamation. Twenty minutes later, she's out for the count, and Lex hoists the relatively light 21-year old, who nestles her head into the crook of his neck, and _that hair is ticklish as hell_ , he curses inwardly. _Dropping someone in a bridal carry has a 60% chance of causing minor spinal injury,_ he tells himself to stop his arms from giving in five meters from the door.

Lex presses a kiss to her forehead as he settles her in, recalling glances sent in her direction by Kyle Davis, the man who so authoritatively considers himself her closest friend, who is now one of Lex's biggest sources of annoyance after Superman and the Bat.

"Oh can't you see, she belongs to me," he hums, taking stock of the inventory. The room is robust and stocked well enough to outlast nuclear war, with every possible need taken care of.

With the aforementioned being its precise purpose, the bunker had been upgraded a few weeks ago, initially meant to be his final refuge - _but now it shall serve its original purpose of protecting the owner's most prized possessions._

Whatever qualms Lex had regarding this plan, they vanish with the mental image of the World Engine and his creation, waiting to be brought into this world. It's Frankenstein's Monster, and it waits to be unleashed, and when it is, Lex will not have whatever he treasures stand in that thing's way.

Its purpose is to destroy The Man Of Steel, and that alone shall be the result of its actions.

There's an old fashioned pen-and-paper letter on the nightstand, explaining all his actions and, if she is offended by them (which she certainly will be), an apology, and a promise that he shall return safe and unharmed to this very spot within forty-eight hours. Should he not do so, there is a cryptic message detailing the exact (and rather convoluted) process to extract herself from the bunker. _Not that they will be required for someone with that mental faculty._

"Forgive me - I do this solely out of love," Lex murmurs, locking the door as he exits the safe room. It seems like a cliché choice for last words, _and Luthors are all about defying clichés_.

* * *

 ** _Everything seems normal - until it isn't._**

Lilian wakes up, expecting a stiff neck from a night on the sofa or warm arms wrapped around her (which is a weeks-old routine she has immediately fallen in love with), but with none as a greeting, she gropes around the bed, a cold sleek rectangle finally in her fingers.

"Seven thirty a.m.," the digits on the screen read, and she lets out a yawn, glancing around the room.

"Am I hallucinating, or did the windows just vanish?" There are certainly no windows in this room that looks like Lex's and has everything mimicking it - _mimicking_ , because it cannot be the original. The massive French windows are missing, and the room seems larger than the original. She unlocks her phone, and runs a diagnostic test before making sure that no, it is not a mistake and that yes, there is absolutely no signal in this room. _Either the room is enclosed in a Faraday Cage, or it is what I think it is - a leaden bunker._

Lilian opens the cupboard for a fact-check, and it is indeed well-stocked with food enough to comfortably last her a month. _Long, but not too long,_ she thinks to herself while inspecting the rest of the essentials. They've all been placed here a month before at the very most (if she goes by the expiry dates), and the room is surprisingly equipped with lab instruments and materials.

"Lex? Why are we here?" she calls out, staring expectantly at the washroom door. After fifteen long minutes of silence, Lilian's confusion is beginning to morph into panic.

She bangs on the walls, the sound metallic and dull - she tries with the door too, metallic thuds the only sound she hears. Taking a butter knife in the cupboard, she's scraping away at the wallpaper, which after a lot of effort, reveals the dull greyish black colour of lead. The panic solidifies into dread.

There's an envelope kept by the bedside that she hasn't noticed before. Lilian opens it, the paper handmade and European - _German or Austrian, most likely?_ The enclosed sheet reads 'Lilian' on the top in an elegant, flowing script.

 _Dear Lilian,_

 _I know you will not forgive me for the actions I have undertaken, but they are solely to protect you. And as much as I respect your self-sufficiency and independence, I cherish you too much to be selfless enough to leave you unprotected in the face of grave danger._

 _I will keep my promise - I will not murder Kal El, but he needs to be stopped, and if he needs to perish at the hands of someone else, so be it. It is but a small sacrifice in the face of mankind's future, and you cannot be so blind and/or selfish enough to discount that._

 _There is, of course, a way to get out of this bunker, should I not return at the end of the forty eight hour waiting period. Just follow your intuition (those lab instruments aren't for comfort) and you should be able to make your way out._

 _You know what I'm going to do and what the repercussions might be - if it all goes to hell, I don't want you to live with the guilt of not being able to change my mind; accept it - no one could, can and will be able to ever achieve that Herculean feat._

 _I am thankful for your companionship - you have a beautiful mind and an even more beautiful persona - and am truly remorseful and penitent for any hurt I have ever caused you, but I cannot apologize for my further actions, nor do I seek forgiveness for those._

 _And as cliché, deceptive and hollow this statement may have become since time immemorial, I mean it with all sincerity when I say that you are the person I have come the closest to having formed a bond of love with._

 _Hoping against hope to see you again,  
Lex _

Crying won't do her any good, Lilian repeats to herself as she tucks the letter in a corner of the bunker, knowing that no agency, government or otherwise, will ever discover this fallout shelter.

The words, striking back on stark white burn into her retina, forever imprinted in a corner of her brain, never to be erased. This might be the last she hears from him if she doesn't get out of this box soon, and _that isn't bloody likely, not under my watch._

A Geiger counter, a toolkit and surgical instruments have never seemed more useful.

* * *

 **Read and review!**


	17. Fight Night

**Well, here we go. I apologize for the lack of a Lex POV, and everything else coming in advance.**

* * *

 ** _Those doomsday preppers deserve a Presidential Medal of Freedom for their skills._**

The Geiger counter shows minor aberrations, but they are standard, even for a fallout shelter. There are two spots, however, where the count rises significantly - the door and a lining along the west wall. She tries the door first, but it's fairly well sealed, with only the lower safety lining tampered with. She tries to prise the metal open with the crowbar but to no avail - _obviously - it's a goddamned blast door, not some steel shed._

Lilian checks the chemicals on the table - hydrochloric acid, sulphuric acid and nitric acid. She can manufacture aqua regia, _but it will take time_ , and besides, the fumes would be potentially dangerous. She sifts through the cupboards to find an appropriate oxygen mask with a cylinder and the required gloves and glasses, then gets down to work.

When the liquid cools down, Lilian fills it in a glass wash-bottle, liberally spreading the liquid on the lead door's outline. Moments later, hissing fills the room as the corrosive mixture engulfs the room in orange-red smoke. She scrambles back from the door as a hunk of lead comes crashing down, a loud crash reverberating through the room.

She climbs over the smoking mess, taking her phone along with her. Racing across the sterile white corridor, a toneless robotic female voice asks her to state her name. "Lilian Chase." The door in front springs open, revealing an eight-inch thick lead wall opening into Luthor Senior's study.

She knows where Lex would most likely be, yet she needs to be sure, and she can see Anderson Cooper's pensive and slightly alarmed face, the silver fox haired man reporting a massive power surge in the city, the source being LexCorp Research Park.

"Lois! Lois!" She's yelling into the phone, running across the manor's basketball court. Taking extra care, Lilian hacks into Lex's account from her phone to put the manor on total lockdown. It's time-consuming, but an extremely necessary step - _no one apart from us shall ever set foot here - I won't let them._

"Lilian, Lex has -"

"I know, I know!"

"You knew he was going to take Martha as bait?" Lois sounds like Lilian stabbed her.

" ** _What?_** " The words shock her - she knew of the World Engine, but this is news.

"What did you know?"

"The research park - he may be restarting the World Engine." The robotic voice announces the completion of the lockdown as she gets into the car, shifting the call to the vehicle's speakers.

"He really is psychotic."

"Lois, he needs help-" Their call is cut short by the sound of a chopper's blades, Lois hanging up. With no leads left, Lilian follows the crackling lightning to LexCorp Research Park but stops by the intersection, seeing a little girl hiding behind a building on a pavement that is now just rubble. _Who did this?_

"What happened?" The little lady, dressed in a Superman T-Shirt, is trembling, clutching a small bag in her arms.

"I-I- was g-goin h-home f-from art class," she stutters, "and he t-threw him." Tears spill from wide, terror filled brown eyes.

"Who threw whom?" Lilian picks her up, racing back to her car as a crash emanates from nearby - not too close, but not far either.

"S-Superman."

"Threw whom?" she's being gentle, but Lilian cannot hide her growing fear at the fact that her guess might be right.

"Batman." Her heart plummets. "And then he got up and dragged Superman off, and starting hit-hitting Superman - he'll kill him," she's crying, hugging Lilian as they sit in the back seat of the car. She picks up the girl, strapping her in the front. "I want to go home."

"I'll get you home right now, sweetheart." She drives around for a while until they see a distraught couple, the man screaming his throat hoarse. The little girl tugs urgently at her seatbelt, and Lilian stops the car, the child rocketing out of the vehicle towards her parents.

"Thank you so much," the mother says between sobs, and she nods for a reply, tears streaking her face. She doesn't want anyone close to her to die tonight.

She calls up Lois again - her voice is crackly from the other end.

"Batman's going to kill Clark," Lois' panic and hysteria are clear.

"Where are they?"

"By the port."

"I'm near."

"Stop Lex!" Lilian tears through the dilapidated streets, and by the time she reaches LexCorp Research Park, a SWAT team has already cordoned off the area.

"Ma'am, please step away," an officer's arm stops her.

"Lex Luthor's life is in danger," she says forcefully. "Let me in."

"Ma'am, this area is cordoned off for civilians -" Clark cuts the man short, landing a few feet away from them.

"I'm begging you," she looks imploringly at the Kryptonian, not bothering to stop the tears, "he needs help. **_Please_**." He nods, scooping her up before flying into the compound. He sets her down and she's running towards the door, concealing the entrance of the World Engine.

The sight inside is truly terrifying - a massive blob of albumin contains the most hideous and hateful creature known to her eyes. It struggles against its cocoon, and Lex stands there, his expression expectant and hateful.

Superman chooses to enter through the ceiling, Lex's disappointed tone carrying across the crackling and the lapping of water. "Late, late, says the white rabbit." He turns around. "Right, wabbit?" She's hiding behind an outcropping of rock, watching the scene unfold before her in complete and abject horror. The man she loves has disappeared, replaced by a gruesome, psychopathic and monstrous copy of him - a corrupted double.

"You've lost," Kal's voice echoes through the chamber. Lex replies, but she doesn't hear, hearing Kal's reply to him instead. "You'll learn."

"I don't hate the sinner," says Lex, "I hate the sin." And she hates herself, hates herself for not having been forceful enough, for not stopping him.

"Stop," she says, loud enough for him to hear as she steps out of her hiding spot. His face pales, the malice draining away to give place to dread and shame.

"Get out." She shakes her head, walking forward.

"I'd rather die than watch you become this horrendous fiend." He, however, is unrelenting, turning to Kal. "Well, if man won't kill god," he turns to face the creature, "the devil will do it!" In what follows as a sickening simulation of birth, the creature tears free of its confines, roaring and stretching, arcs of pure electricity dancing around him.

She only has time to see a shockwave of sound and light heading her way as Kal picks her up, zooming through the sky before leaving her somewhere safe, the man tearing back towards the building.

"Kal, no!" Her yell is lost to the silence of the street. She ses a flash of white and a pair of heels and begins run towards them, colliding into a frantic Lois.

"Lilian, wait, what-" her older cousin looks over her injuries, eyes widening. "You're bleeding badly. And your head -"

"Mrs. Kent?"

"Safe - the Bat helped." Lois answers her look of confusion and bewilderment. "Long story short, someone he loves was named Martha. He couldn't watch another Martha die." _Martha_? She's connected the dots, and gods, wasn't it obvious?

"Bruce Wayne is the Batman?"

"Bruce Wayne?"

"How many people do we know from Gotham have someone they loved named Martha, and also have the money to afford Batman's tech?" Lois doesn't reply, choosing to look at Lilian with the face of a journalist who missed the elephant in the room.

"Lois, the monster is -"

"Kryptonian," they both finish. "Batman has a spear made of pure Kryptonite." _So that's where all the Kryptonite went._ "We need to retrieve it from that old abandoned church-cum-mausoleum by the port."

"Why is it there?"

"Well, it's a long story -" they are cut short by the monster being flung up into the sky, Superman propelling the beast upwards. "Go get Lex out of there - I'll get the spear." An abandoned car stands a few feet away, the open door a blatant invitation for her to steal it. _Why is the only productive thing I'm doing being just chasing down Lex?_

By the time she reaches the compound, the number of SWAT units have increased ten-fold, the men checking their scopes and repeating instructions. "Miss Chase, please leave," the same man who first greeted her faces her again, agitated and annoyed at her. "You are a civilian and at extreme risk."

"You won't be able to breach the chamber without my help." The man behind him turns, the steel lapel glinting in the moonlight, a certain Colonel Rick Flag.

"And how are we to believe that?" Flag addresses her, face guarded and emotionless.

"Mr… Flag," she peers closer, squinting to confirm the name, "I'm a part of Mr. Luthor's research team which was appointed to work in the innermost labs of LexCorp Research. I also happen to be his girlfriend, not that it would matter in such a situation."

"Actually," Flag runs his eyes across her, "it would matter greatly. Alpha Unit!" A group of five men surround her. "Lead the way, ma'am." She takes tentative steps to the cavernous chamber, taking care to avoid the rubble and stray wires. A few minutes later, they reach the door, which is surprisingly open. She darts forward, entering the corridor before Flag can stop her. The rest of the task force follows suit, guns cocked for aim.

There's an odd silence pervading the place, broken by a metallic, disembodied utterance of 'Lex Luthor'. It's unsettling, sending a chill down her bones. Lilian takes smaller steps, approaching the World Engine gingerly - the sight that greets her is otherworldly, in the most literal sense.

Surrounded in a pool of blood cells the size of maraschino cherries, Lex faces a metallic horned creature, three boxes between them. They are made of the same metal as seen in the S.T.A.R Labs footage, pulsating as if imbued with life and sentience. The creatures roars, dissolving in a shower of cubes made of the same metal. Amidst the incredulity on the faces of every member of the task force and Rick Flag's barely suppressed 'holy fuck', she hears Lex mutter 'help', whimper barely reaching her ears, pushing her to the edge of tears.

He turns around, the fear and terror on his face morphing into an indescribable look, anger and insanity and terror all mixed together to bring to life the change she always feared for him. He turns to face her, eyes and face expressionless.

The men shake themselves out of their stupor, rushing down to apprehend him. Rick Flag takes her arm. "Miss Chase, you have the right to remain silent - until the interrogation, that is."

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	18. Veniam Ad Vos

**_They don't even hold a hearing._**

The ride to Blackgate is short and uneventful, Lilian's haggard face turned in his direction, begging for a plausible explanation. Apart from the truth, there is none to offer, and she refuses to believe that.

Eros is a monster the gods fear, and Psyche was never made for him.

Yet his Psyche stayed, and he kept her, protected her even - like Hades for Persephone, raising hell's gates to keep his beloved away from the terrors. But even gods and kings fall, and so did he, and now he had nothing to offer to lessen their collective pain. Nothing except prison and his absence from her life. Once at Blackgate, they immediately take her away, and she doesn't protest, following the men in black and khaki without a question. Her only action is to repeatedly glance back at him, eyes full of the sting of betrayal and defeat.

He is led down a sterile white corridor, shackles clamped on his hands the moment he sits down at the table. A few hours later, the only person to enter the room is June Finch, looking none worse for the wear - he expects her to smirk or glare, but he only receives pity, and she doesn't even sit down in front of him, asking only one question -

"Was his death truly necessary?"

This new revelation is a surprise, and he is satisfied in the knowledge that the Man of Steel will not be there to reign over this world by terror but is also scared, scared for the fate of this planet, scared of the visitors from Apokolips - _Superman would've been some good right now_.

"I don't know," comes his honest answer. She doesn't say anything else, choosing to only look at him with hurt, like a mother mourning the loss of a child gone astray, before she leaves. After what seems like eternity, the door opens again, and he expects to see Lilian but is only greeted by SWAT officers, who take his cuffed and shackled arms to lead him down the corridor.

They lead him to an austere conference room, its occupants facing the black phone on the table, at the head of which sits June Finch and beside her, Amanda Waller.

"Senator Finch, I leave it to you," the President says with a sigh, voice filled with resignation. "Do with him as you see fit." She presses END and turns to look at him, expression same as before.

"He's insane," she looks at Waller, the latter poker-faced and emotionless. "No use of a trial. All his actions are justified by lack of mental stability - he's broken and abused and unhinged, and we'll get nothing out of trying an insane child." He barely suppresses a sneer, the 'child' bringing a dry, mirthless laugh to his throat. "Let him be on death row, but life imprisonment it is for now."

"Belle Reve would suit him, Senator," Waller says. "We can keep him." June Finch seems to consider this for a while, nodding after receiving assent from all occupants of the table.

"Take him back to the room," she instructs, and the men lead him back. The door only opens four hours later, and Lex knows because he's slept his fill.

"They're letting me see you one last time," Lilian says, sitting in front of him, "Said they owed us that much." He chuckles, the sound bringing a small smile to her face, a smile he would pay any price for.

"So much for young love." Her face falls and he can see her fists clench, the facial muscles twitching, shifting between expressions of pain and anguish. He wants to die, knowing he's caused her the worst harm he could - _I am a monster after all, and monsters cannot love without destruction trailing in its wake._

"If it don't end in bloodshed, It's probably not love, right?" She mutters humorlessly, tear-tracked cheeks glistening in the harsh white light. "Why?" That monosyllabic question is the hardest to answer, and she keeps looking at him, waiting for words, empty or not. A while later, the colonel knocks, motioning for her to move.

Lilian leans across the table, pressing one last kiss to his lips. His tears are involuntary, brought on by the onslaught of emotions, blood and tears staining both their lips. "Veniam ad vos," he whispers, his one last promise which truly matters.

With a last look of longing and pain, she is gone.

* * *

 ** _The first person she sees at home is a lawyer._**

"Miss Chase," he shakes her hand, the two standing outside the gates of Luthor manor. "I'm just here to give you this." She opens the envelope, thoroughly reading the contents of the letter before pocketing it.

"Do I have to sign any paperwork?" she questions, to which the lawyer replies with a curt shake of his head.

"However, there will be some paperwork back at the office which you may have to study." She nods, utterly disinterested in the fact that she's been named CEO of LexCorp and guardian of Luthor manor. "I'm Daniel Karp, Mr. Luthor's legal counsel and now yours. Thank you for your time."

"Thank you." Once the man is gone, Lilian drives up to the house, disabling the lockdown with a series of complicated passwords, one of them including her retinal signature.

The house is full of its previous occupants, yet without him it looks bare and lifeless, as if its very life-force had been stolen had been stolen from it. She checks the date on the her phone, and it doesn't feel like two days have passed since the incident. Lilian knows the FBI will descend on the house once they know it has been freed from lockdown, but till they do, she utilises the luxury of solitude given to her and takes in the house and memories she has come to associate with it in such a short time.

 _He isn't dead,_ she tells herself as her legs involuntarily take her to his room - _theirs_ \- and take her all the way to the bed. _Forever a pariah, forever a threat in the eyes of society, never to be accepted_. This was the very thing she feared for him, never wanted. _It's a fate worse than death,_ a small voice in her brain tells her. The screen of her phone lights up, and she lifts the screen to her eyes, wishing to turn the damn thing off.

 _Clark - he's gone._

The news hits her like a brick wall, and she can feel nothing, see nothing, hear nothing - all the constants in her life are gone, all at an instant. She curls into a ball and squeezes her eyes shut, screaming her throat hoarse - but the sound never comes, only tears and silence.

"Thank you for coming," Martha wishes her as she and Lois enter the house. The kind old woman takes a look at the two and shares a hug with Lois, the two women smiling sadly with teary eyes. Lois goes up the stairs - presumably to Clark's room - leaving the two alone in the quaint dining hall.

"I met him, you know," Martha says, the two taking a seat at the small round dining table. "He was just a young man trying to do the right thing from his perspective." Lilian looks up, shocked and surprised. Here was the lady whose son had died, speaking to the lover of the man that killed him, and all she had was sympathy for them.

"Y-You m-met him?" Martha nods, squeezing a small, pale hand of hers. "I'm sorry for what happened, and I'm sorry that no one could help him. I'm a mother - I can see a broken child." Lilian looks at the floor, unable to formulate a response. "We both lost someone we loved that day, Lilian." Martha's voice wobbles. "I knew this might come someday, knew that my son will one day die saving a world that was never his."

"I'm sorry for what he did," is all Lilian tells her. "He never… He needed help, help I couldn't give him," she whispers the last part, meant only to be heard by her but Martha does, and she smiles sadly at the young girl.

"You cannot punish for yourself for not being able to heal wounds of decades in so short a time. People take a lifetime and still cannot erase those scars. You made him as whole as he could be."

"Not enough for him," she mumbles wryly.

"Or for you." The doorbell rings, and Martha opens the door to receive their first guest. Lilian gets up, making way for the porch. Head amidst arms wrapped around her knees, she doesn't realise the presence of another person until an arm encircles her shoulders.

No words are passed between the two cousins as they face the vegetable garden, dimly lit by the light the cloudy sky offers. Lois puts her head on her shoulder, and Lilian spots a diamond ring, simple and austere, on Lois' hand.

"Diamond absolute," Lois remarks, voice heavy with emotion. "Guess even diamonds shatter." A while passes before she speaks again. "How are you?"

"As well as I can be," Lilian replies bitterly, toying with the simple black watch on her arm, an old Seiko which has been tinkered with by Lex to run on body heat. **_Maria Luthor_** , the name etched at the back read. _His mother's watch._ "I don't think I can ever go back to normalcy now." Voices float through the open door, low and solemn and mourning the loss of a good friend, a helpful young man. Someone switches on the television, and all they hear is the death of Superman.

"They really loved him," Lois says, twisting the ring.

"But they don't know how to honor him," she completes. "The Army sees a soldier, the people a messiah." She doesn't need to voice the fear and despair that will slowly grip people in the year to come - _how can humans stand, when gods fall?_

The discussion comes to an abrupt end with Martha calling the two in - the rest of the evening goes in celebrating the life and mourning the death of Clark Joseph Kent.

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